Sweet, sour, salty and bitter: If you ask me to pick one flavor, it's "sour" every time. As a kid growing up in Japan, I didn’t really like sweets. I always preferred sour or savory flavors. 

My Father in a Hospital

When I was 12 years old, my father was hospitalized for a gastroduodenal ulcer.  It was March and at the end of a school year (Japanese schools begin in April and end in March).  Because he ordered my mother to stay at the hospital to look after him, she missed my graduation.  In Japan, we make big deals out of “ceremonies”, but I don’t remember caring much about my mother’s absence at the school. 

What I do remember is that after the ceremony, I went to my father’s hospital and my mother handed me a large jar of umeboshi (a.k.a. pickled plums). A relative sent it as a get-well gift for my father after the surgery.  Because my mother was going to stay at the hospital that night, it was my job to carry it home all by myself.

Rice & Umeboshi

My mother’s home town is near Sendai (仙台) in the northern part of Japan.  You may remember about the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 which created the tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant.  That tsunami also reached my mother’s ancestral house which was only about 100 km (60 miles) north of Fukushima.  It devastated the surrounding region in Sendai, but my grandfather’s house was miraculously spared. Half of my many uncles and cousins still lived in the area – and they all survived.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story for another time ... 

My grandfather was a civil servant, not a farmer, a little unusual in the village my mother grew up in.  The area was developed in the early part of the 1600s by an ambitious warlord, Da-te Masamune (伊達政宗), who was born at the end of the Warring States Period (戦国時代｜せんごくじだい).  He served the famous “Shoguns” such as Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康). 

Much as cathedrals and castles in Europe helped develop towns and industries in the surrounding region, Sendai became a vibrant town with industries that supported the castle and many shrines Lord Da-te built in his long 70 years of his life.  Sendai is located in Miyagi (宮城) Prefecture (state) which Da-te developed as the “rice basket” of Japan.  At its peak in the 1700s, Miyagi used to produce about one third of the rice consumed in the capital city of Edo (now Tokyo). Today it still ranks in the top 5 among the rice producers of Japan.

One of my uncles married and was adopted into a rice farmer’s family because they did not have a son to carry on the family name.  This was a fairly common practice.  He ended up becoming a wealthy and influential farmer-politician – because the rice farmers’ unions yield much influence in Japan’s regional politics.  Always generous, when the new crops were harvested, he would send rice to his siblings who moved away to the big city of Tokyo, including my mother.  Along with the rice, my uncle would occasionally include his wife’s homemade pickled plums in the care package and we always relished them as if they were Godiva chocolates.

What is Umeboshi?

Umeboshi or pickled plums really should be called “salted” plums because there are only two ingredients, salt and plums. You can buy them in any market across Japan, but if you come from a farming community, you grew up pickling your own plums.  Many Japanese of my generation remember seeing their family pickle plums or make Ume-shu (plum wine) in early summer when there is an abundant supply of fresh plums. 

When preparing the plums, our mother told us not to eat the raw plum fruit.  Why?  It is not just an old wive’s tale, I found out – plum’s seeds contain “cyanogenetic glycoside”, also known as “cyanide”. Yikes.  But don’t be alarmed – you would have to eat about 300 fresh plums AND its seeds (if you dare) to get the amount of toxin that might do you in.

When the plum plant was first brought to Japan in the 700s, its fruit was first introduced in the form of “crow plum (烏梅｜うばい)”. It was a smoked plum, pitch black in color (thus its name) and was used as an herbal medicine.  Like most “novelty” foods that came from China or Korea, the plum was first only available to the nobles and the imperial families – it was prescribed to them for medicinal purposes. Soon the fruit was pickled (not smoked) and became a tea treat to the monks, and by the 1300s~1400s, it was commonly used as battle food for the warrior class.  Today, it is as ubiquitous as peanut butter in America – you can find a small jar of umeboshi in just about every fridge in a Japanese household.

Umeboshi as “Superfood”

Many of umeboshi’s health benefits were recorded in the oldest Japanese medical text called “Ishinpo (医心方)” written in 984: 

“[Umeboshi help] lower elevated energy, remove fever, calm the heart, heal bodily aches or tingling of hands/feet, and heal skin conditions.  They also stop diarrhea and dryness in your mouth.”  

At the end of the 1800s, people even used it to combat cholera epidemics because they believed its antibacterial properties would help kill the bacteria and stop it from spreading.

Today, with the help of scientific research, we now know that umeboshi is indeed packed with scores of vitamins and minerals – such as citric acid, malic acid, catechin, vanillin, polyphenol and many other key compounds.  It also boasts alkaline, antibacterial, and antioxidant properties that provide numerous health benefits.  In short, umeboshi can help:

• prevent food poisoning 

• relieve motion sickness  

• improve blood circulation 

• beautify your skin

• relieve tension and stiff muscles

• recover from a hangover or heat stroke

• enhance appetite and digestion

• weight loss because vanillin and polyphenol are known to help with fat burn and to prevent storage of fat

So it’s a superfood!  Packed with all these nutrients in its small body, and because of its portable nature, it was a samurai's staple at the battles.  Even today, you can see lunch boxes with a lone umeboshi in the center of the rice.  It’s called “hinomaru bento (日の丸弁当)” because it resembles the Japanese national flag (“hinomaru” referring to the roundness of the sun).  Umeboshi’s antibacterial property serves an important purpose in keeping the rice and the food from going bad (not just for added color…).  Come to think of it, I always carried some ume(boshi) mints whenever we went on a field trip – because I suffered from terrible motion sickness when I was young and umeboshi helped me on long bus rides.

Back to My Story…

To finish my story, after leaving my father’s hospital with this large jar, I took a train to go home - alone.  I still remember standing on the platform clutching the jar against my chest.  In Japan, it’s considered rude to eat in public, but the thought of sour plums right under my nose made my mouth water and my jaw ache… and I couldn’t help it anymore.  I opened the jar, took out one moist pickled plum and popped it in my mouth…!

The soft plum meat mixed in with my hyper activated saliva eased the ache in my jaw and satisfied my craving.  After I chewed and swallowed the fruit, I rolled the seed in my mouth like candy.  Then I placed the seed in a certain position between my strongest molars and cracked it open, exposing the soft and white center of the seed.  It was sort of a game for me to get to this part of the seed because its hard shell can be very stubborn to crack.  It was a “victory” to crush it because this white center was the sourest of all.  Oh, that makes my mouth water now just thinking about it …!

It must have been mid-day because I remember the train taking a long time to arrive.  So I popped one more pickled plum in my mouth – then another and another …I can’t even remember how many I ate.  Pickled plum was my candy.  It still is.

Try Some Pickled Plums…

• On a hot day, chop up some pickled plum fruit and mix it in cold carbonated water (with a splash of apple cider vinegar for extra kick) to replace sodium lost from sweating – it will also help improve your digestion.

• If you are feeling stressed or fatigued after a hard workout, mix a little bit of pickled plum in your salad dressing to help metabolize lactic acid and improve your muscle recovery.

• Feeling a little car sick?  Drink some green tea with a little bit of pickled plum mixed in – it will help with the motion sickness, and the caffeine in the tea may also perk you up!