The fish used is deliberately lean. Pacific saury that has come south to the Kumano Sea between late autumn and early summer, smaller than the ones caught further north and with much of the fat already gone off them. That is what makes them suitable for something that has to keep.

Totsukawa is a single village, the largest by area in the country, and it makes this two different ways depending on which end of it you happen to be in. The two halves do not appear to have converged.

In the north it is a nare-zushi. The saury is salted, the salt is then washed off, and the fish is formed together with rice cooked with salt and sake, packed into a tub, topped up with water and salt, and left to ferment for a long time.

In the south it is a pressed sushi. Salted saury, tightened in seasoned vinegar, laid over vinegared rice. Two settled answers inside one village. It is eaten mainly at new year, and the pattern in many households was to pack it in autumn and lift it out of the tub on the last day of December. The saury is opened along the back before either process begins. A sea fish carried up over the mountains, and kept until the year turns.