Itakura sits where the Tone, the Watarase, and the Yata rivers come together, and the area is called Gunma's water country. There used to be many more ponds and marshes than there are now, and wholesalers dealing in freshwater fish lined the roads, with restaurants serving river fish clustered around them.

The catfish is chopped with a knife, left in its skin, and dropped into hot oil. Some restaurants spend a week purging the fish in clean water first, to take the mud out of it. That step decides everything. It is why the result tastes the way it does.

I went in braced for the muddy, weedy quality that river fish are supposed to have, and it was not there at all. The flesh is white, plump, mild to the point of blandness in the best sense, and it falls apart inside the batter. There is a second preparation, tatakiage, where the fish is minced bones and all, mixed with tofu, miso, shiso seed and carrot, rolled into balls and fried.

Fewer places make any of it than once did, and the ones that remain are old houses. The old river fish restaurants in Itakura keep going, and the town prints pamphlets listing where to find them, which is what it looks like when a food is being held in place on purpose.