Good food stirs people’s wanderlust; Shonai puts an effort in promoting “native cuisine” for local revitalization

“Shonai” in Yamagata Prefecture is located in the North West part of Japan’s main island, spread between Sakata city and Tsuruoka city, facing the Japan Sea. The area once flourished as a harbor town during Edo era and recently became famous due to the novel written by Shohei Fujisawa. Shonai is also known for abundance of fresh food and good rice. Therefore, in 2004 local government decided to promote local food products and gusto of regional cuisine, as part of its efforts to revitalize local community.

Both private and public sector are joining forces to carry on development and promotion of regionally produced food. They are represented by key industry and university stakeholders, led by Yamagata’s Industry and Economy Planning Division. The most interesting part of this project is that they adopted “Shonai” as their brand name. This is mainly due to the fact that Yamagata prefecture itself does not have that many distinctive traits, while smaller administrative units, such as Sakata and Tsuruoka cities, have limited information transmission capacity.

Yamagata can be divided into 4 areas due to its climate and Shonai is one of them. People in this area have similar temperament, coming from common environment and shared experiences. At the same time, Shonai has variety of terrains such as mountains, plane fields, coastline, and so on, and it is because of this diversity, that there are many distinctive food products in the region. As “food culture” is largely related to the native surroundings, “Shonai” was hence the logical choice to promote “native diet”. It was also a unique approach to appoint three chefs as goodwill ambassadors for “Shonai”. To appoint friendship ambassadors is not uncommon, but there are just few exceptions where this role is specific to the “food” theme. In this case, regional government provides locally-produced food through cooks’ network and let them fully experience the good taste of Shonai products. At the same time, with the assistance of agricultural department of Yamagata University, the ambassadors also act as promoters of local farm producers in Shonai, helping them to achieve greater recognition of heirloom vegetables grown on-site.

Masahiro Okuda, the goodwill ambassador of Shonai, is one of the movers and shakers of this project. He realized magnificence of Shonai vegetable during his chef training in Tokyo. At the age of 30, he moved back to Tsuruoka city and opened the Italian restaurant called “Al.che-cciano”, in the spring of 2004. Since then, he has worked passionately to discover and introduce new kinds of local food. For example, he once brought a Shonai lamb meat to a famous chef, who he had never met before. The lamb plate became the most popular dish in that restaurant’s menu and its sales increased 50% within 3 years. Masahiro Okuda is also known to use many ingredients that are common in local households, but are not highly regarded at the same time. His efforts, such as establishment of the system to protect local radish, provide additional support and push for to the government led food movement. The promotion of hidden, regional, cuisine multiplies not only economic effects in local community, but also attracts number of travelers who have interest in such resources.

Today, “Al.che-cciano” is one of the hard-to-make-reservation restaurants and attracts customers from all parts of the country. Such varied cuisine and rich food offer, have potential to trigger longer stays of visitors and to increase the number of repeaters. Moreover, existence of first class chef, who loves local food and is able to attract numerous guests to his restaurant, also revived locals’ confidence and pride in their own town.

This project is now in its 5th year of operations and is advancing to the next stage. In autumn of 2009, JR (Japan Railway Company) group plans to launch the “Niigata destination campaign”. Niigata is the prefecture next to Yamagata and the campaign will also include promotion of “Shonai” area. There are great expectations for this regional collaboration project, supported by people and industries that have aspiration for local revitalization.

＜Reference＞
＜Appendix 1＞URL of Shonai　http://agrin.jp/hp/miyako/

＜Appendix 2＞
Local food calendar which is supervised by goodwill ambassadors of Shonai
http://agrin.jp/hp/miyako/image/cal.pdf