The fruit is koshu hyakume, an astringent persimmon of three hundred and fifty to four hundred grams, shaped like a temple bell. Too big and too sour to eat as it is.

The peel comes off by hand. The fruit is smoked, then tied and hung from bamboo poles for about twenty days, then laid out on racks and worked by hand, kneaded as it dries, until it takes the shape and firmness wanted. One account of the name says it comes from rolling the fruit over, korokoro, so that the sun reached every part of it.

The distinction from other dried persimmons is a moisture reading. Around fifty percent, still soft, and it is called anpo-gaki. Taken down to twenty-five or thirty percent, at which point the sugars crystallize and a white bloom comes to the surface, and it is korogaki.

The work runs from early November to late December. Matsusato, in the Enzan area of Koshu city, is the district it is known for, and through those weeks the fruit hangs in rows under the eaves of the houses, an amber curtain across the front of the village. Takeda Shingen is said to have encouraged the production, which puts the practice back four and a half centuries. What decides when a piece is done is somebody's hand on it.