Japan Heritage story
Yuasa: where Japanese soy sauce began
「最初の一滴」醤油醸造の発祥の地 紀州湯浅
Soy sauce, it's said, began as the liquid that pooled in vats of a special miso a Zen monk brought back from China. The people of Yuasa in Wakayama perfected it, and their brewery town still smells of soy sauce.
Key facts
- Theme
- Sea and waterside, Festivals and rituals, Food and sake
- Era
- Muromachi, Azuchi-Momoyama, Edo
- Region
- Kansai
- Official name in Japanese
- 「最初の一滴」醤油醸造の発祥の地 紀州湯浅
- Official area (in Japanese)
- 和歌山県（湯浅町）
The story
In 1249 the Zen monk Kakushin sailed to Song China and, while training at Jingshan temple, learned to make a miso packed with summer vegetables. He came home in 1254 and taught it, and it was soon made widely in Yuasa; today it is known as Kinzanji miso. As it matured, juice from the vegetables collected in the vats. Someone tasted it, found it rich and delicious, and Yuasa's people worked to make more of it. That, the story goes, is how soy sauce was born.
By 1535 a brewer named Akagiri Saburoshiro was shipping over 100 koku of soy sauce to Osaka, and in 1591 Toyotomi Hideyoshi let his family keep a large ship, which they used to carry it. Under the protection of the Kishu domain, Yuasa had 92 brewers by the early 1800s, and its soy sauce sailed all over Japan.
What to see
- The old brewery streets: townhouses with heavy tiled roofs, fine lattices and white-walled storehouses.Google Maps 湯浅町 伝統的建造物群保存地区 (opens in a new tab)
- Working breweries: long-established makers whose soy sauce scent drifts into the lanes.
Plan your trip with the Wakayama prefecture guide and see more history and heritage.
Good to know
- Follow your nose: the smell of brewing is strongest near the old breweries.
- Buy a bottle of soy sauce and some Kinzanji miso to taste the whole story.
- Walk the side lanes as well as the main streets; the scent of soy sauce fills both.
Questions travellers ask
Where did soy sauce come from?
By tradition, from the liquid that collected in vats of Kinzanji-style miso in Yuasa, which a Zen monk learned to make in China in the 1200s.
What is Kinzanji miso?
A chunky miso made with summer vegetables, eaten as a side dish rather than used for soup.
Where it comes from
More heritage stories from the same area
- Hirokawa: the tsunami levee built for a hundred generations
- Katsuragi Shugen: where mountain asceticism began
- Living with whales on the Kumano coast
- Nyonin Koya: the temples where women prayed instead of Mount Koya
- Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage: Japan's 1,300-year journey of the heart
- Wakanoura: a bay of views that inspired poets
Local foods from the same area
Crafts from the same area
Sources
We checked the facts on this page against these sources.