How Shoyu Started its Story

White-wall wooden warehouses along a stone-wall canal. The soy sauce brewery, Kado-cho, is still working in a medieval elegance. A car park is at the East end of the canal, and the fragrance of soy beans and molt leads you into a tiny street which runs along the warehouses. Along the alley, you can find the antenna shop of the brewery and the museum run by the company.
The brochure of the museum says, "Shoyu, the world famous seasoning, was originally produced in Yuasa from Kinzan-ji-miso or soy bean paste, which was brought from China in the early 13th century by Hoto-kokushi of Kokoku-ji Temple of Yura."
The company still sticks to their handmade style. The museum exhibits old facilities and tools for producing soy sauce. Its DVD shows how the soy sauce is brewed. After exploring the area for a while, you can hardly resist buying prestigiously crafted soy sauce.
Jinshan-si (or Kinzan-ji in Japanese pronounciation of the Chinese characters) Temple is located in Zhenjiang City along Yangzi-jiang River. I have been there a couple of times. The city is in the middle of Shanghai and Nanjin and on the Southern bank of the river, and the temple is on an island near the city. When we made the first school trip to China, whose major destinations were Shanghai and Nanjin, we stayed at the city for a night because the highway between the two mega-cities was still under construction. Kinzan-ji-miso had had a long way to come to Japan.
Miso and shoyu's story didn't end at Yuasa. As you know, Japanese people used to have vegetarian tendency, and soy beans used to be the major protein source. Miso spread all over Japan to become one of the most imoortant soy-bean foods, along with tofu and natto. Every major templs came to have its own version of kinzan-ji-miso. Shoyu made its way to the East, too. It arrived at Chosi in today's Chiba prefecture. The town became one of the biggest providers of shoyu to Edo.
The number of soy sauce consumers has increased, and they also spread around the world. The number of the soy sauce makers in Yuasa, however, has decreased significantly. According to the brochure, there used to be 92 of them, while we can find only 3 today.
It is a pity that many Yuasa makers have closed notwithstanding the fact that the consumption and brewage of soy sauce has spread around the world.