Fishermen from Misaki, out on long-distance voyages, used to hang the heads of tuna from the ship's smokestack. The heads had no market value and there was heat going to waste, so they steamed and roasted there and got eaten by the crew. When the boats came back into port, the same thing served as a drinking snack for the younger hands.

About forty years ago restaurants near Misaki harbor started putting it in front of paying customers. What arrives at the table is an entire tuna head, and the first response is always to the size of it, which is closer to a piece of furniture than to a portion of fish.

Then you work out where to put the chopsticks. The cheek, which is dense and almost like beef. The pocket behind the eye, which is soft and fatty and gone in two mouthfuls. Neither of these turns up in an ordinary tuna meal, because in an ordinary tuna meal the head is somewhere else entirely.

So the thing that used to be eaten because nobody would buy it now has to be ordered in advance. Most places want a reservation, since a head is not something a kitchen keeps on hand. You cannot decide to eat this on a whim, which is a strange fate for a crew's leftover.