Sea bass, wrapped in paper and baked. The paper is hosho, a heavy sheet made from paper mulberry, the kind once used for formal documents. It is wetted, wound two or three times around the fish, and the whole parcel goes into the oven.

It began with ash. Fishermen on the lake used to bury the fish in the embers of a beach fire and let it steam there, and the seventh lord of the Matsue domain, hearing of this, asked to try it. Serving a lord a fish covered in ash was not possible. So it was wrapped in paper instead, and that is the account handed down.

Hosho was not made for cooking. It was the paper on which important documents and formal letters were written and carried. What it turns out to do in an oven is absorb oil as the fish cooks, so the richness is drawn off and what is left tastes cleaner than it otherwise would. When the parcel is opened at the table, the smell of scorched paper comes up with the steam.

Sea bass from Lake Shinji is at its best from autumn into early winter; the lake is brackish, joined to the sea, and the fish changes through the year. A wrapping used to hide an embarrassment turned out to be a cooking technique. The method exists because somebody was ashamed of how the dish looked.