“Hatsu-no-mi! Kiri-uri yaa, kiri-uri yaa!”

Utagawa Hiroshige

Naniwa Meisho Zue: Night Stalls at Junkeimachi

Late Edo period; date of production unknown

National Diet Library Digital Collections

Naniwa is an old name for Osaka.

Tuna Has Had Many Names

Tuna has been known by different names depending on the time and place.

In Edo—present-day Tokyo—it was called maguro. In Kamigata—the Kyoto-Osaka region—it was called hatsu or hatsu-no-mi.

The Edo-period dialect dictionary Shokoku Hōgen Butsurui Shōko explains that what people in Edo called maguro no sukimi—scraped tuna meat—was known in the Kinai region around Kyoto and Osaka as hatsu-no-mi.

The name appears in Jippensha Ikku’s Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige, a popular comic travel novel about the adventures of Yajirobei and Kitahachi.

When the two travelers visit Osaka’s Junkeimachi night market, they find vendors selling fish, sushi, and many other foods.

Among the cries filling the street is:

“Hatsu-no-mi! Kiri-uri yaa, kiri-uri yaa!”

The cry means roughly, “Tuna by the slice! Cut and sold, cut and sold!”

The Kaisei Getsurei Hakubutsusen explains that the name came from the early catches—the first fish caught in the season’s first nets—which were once highly prized. This Edo-period reference book describes seasonal customs, plants, animals, and foods.

The same fish, different names in Edo and Kamigata.

Follow a name, and you begin to see the food culture of the place where it was used.