A sea bream of about thirty centimeters is opened along the back, packed with seasoned okara, and steamed whole with its shape intact.

The stuffing is not only okara. Tofu, burdock, carrot, garlic greens, dried shiitake, and egg are worked into it, seasoned with sugar, salt, mirin, and soy sauce. In Haruno they put minced chicken in as well, which is the sort of variation that survives only where a dish is genuinely made at home.

A party in Tosa is called an okyaku. Weddings, shrine festivals, new year: whenever people gathered, this was set out as one of the dishes on the sawachi, the large shared platter that Kochi builds its hospitality around. Until the 1950s the saying went that without a steamed sea bream you did not have an okyaku at all.

Eaten as intended, a piece of fish and some of the stuffing together, it is very good. The problem is the labor. Opening the fish, making and seasoning the okara, packing it, steaming it without the whole thing falling apart. Restaurants and caterers still make it, but in houses it appears less and less, and the sources say plainly that people eat it less often now. A dish nobody could hold a celebration without has become one that rarely turns up.