There is stock in the vinegared rice. Small fish from the Inland Sea — lizardfish, a kind of goby — are simmered down, and that liquid goes into the rice along with a vinegar sweeter than the Tokyo sort. The taste of fish is in the grain rather than in anything sitting on top of it.

Chopped conger eel is folded through, with whatever vegetables the season is offering. The local verb for folding things through is moburu, and the dish is often called moburi-zushi for that reason: named not after an ingredient but after a hand movement.

It is made when guests are expected, and at celebrations, and whenever a number of people are going to be in the house at once. It is not a thing anybody makes for themselves. It comes out in a large shallow bowl, and everybody takes from it.

In 1892 Natsume Soseki came to Matsuyama for the first time and called at the house of Masaoka Shiki. Shiki's mother put this in front of him, and the account says Soseki was delighted and ate it without spilling a single grain. Shiki himself wrote a verse about it: I love it, the sushi of my own Iyo, of Matsuyama. Home cooking survives most reliably when somebody happens to write it down.