In the hands of a specially licensed chef, fugu poses little risk to diners, who pay anything from 5,000 yen to 35,000 yen (£260) a head for a multiple-course meal that typically includes sashimi, a chirinabe hotpot, deep-fried karaage, rice porridge and hot saké served with a grilled fugu fin.Įating fugu served by an unlicensed chef, however, can be fatal: between 20, 10 people died after eating the fish, most of whom had attempted to prepare it themselves. The frisson of danger that accompanies eating fugu has secured it a special status among diners and chefs, who must train for at least three years before attempting to qualify for a license. A panel of experts from Japan’s food safety commission is to rule on the safety of Saga’s farmed fugu by the end of the year. The liver lobby, led by the prefecture’s governor, Yoshinori Yamaguchi, is not giving up.

“I would never serve the liver or other poisonous parts, no matter how many reassurances I’d been given,” says Takahashi, who will return next week to take the official test. One of the biggest fears is that wild and poisonous fugu will find their way into cordoned off breeding pens and mix with their non-toxic counterparts. “There is no absolute guarantee of safety.” “If the prefecture’s proposal is approved, many consumers will mistakenly believe that puffer fish liver is safe to eat, resulting in more accidents,” Yuichi Makita, vice-chairman of the restaurant association, told the Asahi Shimbun. Rearing the fish on food that is toxin-free removes the risk, or so the theory goes.īut owners of hundreds of fugu restaurants in Saga have warned that relaxing the law could end up killing diners. The poison in the fugu is produced when the fish feed on poisonous starfish, snails and other creatures. If digested, the neurotoxin causes numbness around the mouth, followed by paralysis and death by asphyxiation. With help from a local fisheries firm and university researchers, the officials claim they have perfected a method of farming the fish that ensures the liver contains not a single trace of tetrodotoxin. “If any poison finds its way on to the edible parts, it would be disastrous.”ĭespite the risks, officials in Saga prefecture, western Japan, are calling for an end to the decades-old ban on serving the liver – considered by some to be the tastiest part of the fish – in restaurants. Such knives include the almost two-meter-long oroshi hōchō, or the slightly shorter hancho hōchō.“The hardest part is ensuring the parts that can be eaten are absolutely clean,” says Takahashi, one of dozens of chefs being put through their paces at a culinary school in Tokyo in preparation for a test to obtain their fugu licence. Specialized knives exist for processing longer fish, such as tuna.

The length of the knife is suitable to fillet medium-sized fish. As the name indicates, the fugu hiki is traditionally used to slice very thin fugu sashimi and is stored separately from the other knives.

A fugu hiki is similar to the yanagi ba, except that the blade is thinner and more flexible. The tako hiki is usually used to prepare octopus. In Osaka, the yanagi ba has a pointed end, whereas in Tokyo the tako hiki has a rectangular end. Similar to the nakiri bōchō, the style differs slightly between Tokyo and Osaka. 'willow blade'), and fugu hiki ( ふぐ引き, lit. Types of sashimi bōchō include tako hiki ( 蛸引, lit. Sashimi bōchō, literally 'sashimi knife' is a type of long, thin knife used in Japanese cuisine to prepare sashimi (sliced raw fish or other seafood).

Fugu sashimi