Chopping, and nothing else. No heat is applied at any stage; the whole point is to get summer vegetables into somebody raw and without effort. Aubergine and cucumber are cut very small, shiso and myoga and spring onion go in with them, and the whole lot is dressed with soy sauce. Some households add onion. That is the recipe.

Grated yam, okra or shredded kelp is often mixed through to make it cling. Without that it slides off the rice; with it, the mixture holds together on the spoon and stays where you put it. The texture is the reason it works rather than an accident of the ingredients.

It usually goes on rice. It also goes on cold tofu, or into the dipping broth for cold noodles as a kind of relish. Through the summer a household keeps a bowl of it in the cold, and it gets used a few times a day without anybody deciding to have it.

Two explanations exist for the name. One says it acts like a stock, drawing out whatever it is put on. The other says it comes from the verb for cutting things out with a knife. Either way the name concedes that this is not the dish; it is what goes on the dish. And in a Yamagata summer it is the thing in the refrigerator that empties fastest.