Matsuzaki Town
Kunio Koizumi

Local industry having 70% share in the domestic market

It is said to be the beginning of “Sakuramochi (Japanese sweets consisting of pink-colored rice cake and red bean paste)”, that it was eaten at the Doll Festival of March 3. The sweetness of red bean paste in the rice cake and the salty taste of sakuraba that wrapped a wheat flour skin produce the exquisite harmony in the mouth. The cherry leaves used for sakurabazuke is a breed called Oshimazakura that has been specially cultivated for this. In Matsuzaki Town, the cultivation of Oshimazakura started from around 1962 and it has been evolving as an important local industry of the town.
The leaves picking season is from May to August. The harvested leaves are manually sorted according to size, made a bundle of each 50 sheets and tied with a string of Kaya. It is called “Maruke” in this local dialect and there are 10 houses specialized in such “Maruke” in Matsuzaki alone. The bundled sakuraba is soaked in a huge barrel of the height 2m and frontage 2m, which it was soy sauce barrel. The bunched leaves are arranged so as to be concentric circles one by one toward the outside, and the coarse salt of Tokushima is sprinkled evenly from right to left or up and down. About 40,000 bundles (two million leaves) are soaked in one barrel and put the weight of 1 ton at last. When it is soaked for 5 or 6 months, the unique fragrance ingredient of sakuraba, called “coumarin”, is fermented, and the salt water marinated is changed into a liquid having a distinctive smell like wood vinegar.
We have been carrying out product development of new genre, such as putting it into the sausage, and wrapping cheese and ham by it. We start picking at 6 o'clock in the morning, and start "Maruke" work that tie the leaves with cord, after picking is finished. Because it is the work with raw products, we work constantly every day during the season. Sakuraba of Matsuzaki is widely used for sakuramochi, tempura and others, and its powder is used in cookie, sakuraba soba noodle, adzuki-bean jelly, wine and others. “This is a niche industry in the nationwide, but is the local industry that represents Matsuzaki”, Koizumi smiles with pride.

Interviewed in July, 2016
Writer : Hideko Takahashi / Photographer : Hiroyuki Tamura