Edition: U.S. / Global

Kishiwada Journal;In Japan, Deflating a Poisonous Pufferfish Legend

Published: June 10, 1996

For countless centuries, one of the greatest and costliest Japanese delicacies has been fugu, or pufferfish. It is renowned for the possibility that it will leave the diner flopping on the floor, gasping for breath, and soon as dead as the fish itself.

A single fugu contains enough poison to kill 30 people, although no fish is on record for staging quite such a massacre. There is no antidote, and so -- human nature being what it is -- the only food regarded as more alluring in Japan than raw fish is poisonous raw fish.

The problem is that these days, knowledge of fugu and training of chefs has improved so much that a diner stands an excellent chance of surviving the meal. In each of the last two years, only one person has died from fugu poisoning, and that takes some of the interest out of the food.

"The fugu problem has come to an end," Kiichi Kitahama, director of a museum devoted to fugu, declared as he sat in an office cluttered with scientific and medical analyses of pufferfish. The museum is in a warren of zigzag alleys in this coastal town of Kishiwada, on the Osaka Bay in Western Japan -- a region that consumes 70 percent of the nation's fugu.

Mr. Kitahama, who also runs a fugu restaurant (no casualties so far, except for the fish) says that fugu has become so mundane a food that he will close the museum, making it a victim of the improved survival rate.

"I'm closing the museum because it had only one goal, which was to stop fugu poisoning," Mr. Kitahama said, surrounded by baleful-looking pufferfish preserved and mounted throughout his restaurant and museum. "Now there are very few poisoning cases, so the goal has been basically accomplished."

Mr. Kitahama said he started the museum after 176 people died of fugu poisoning in a single year, 1958. The idea was to promote knowledge of fugu and training of chefs so fugu could be prepared safely.

To be sure, fugu consumption is as great as ever these days, for people do not seem to mind eating a fish dinner that they will probably survive. But the risk has diminished to the point that it is now possible to eat fugu absentmindedly.

"I'm not scared at all," Masataka Yoshida, a 48-year-old consultant, declared stoutly as he sat on the tatami floor in the Zuboraya Restaurant in Osaka and dipped his raw fugu sashimi into a sauce. "I trust the chefs in big restaurants like this, although I wouldn't eat fugu in a little restaurant."

Mr. Yoshida's trust is considerable, because, he said, he had eaten fugu liver -- one of the deadliest parts. Selling or serving the liver is illegal in Japan, but customers sometimes ask for a bit because it is said to be the tastiest part and to do wonders for men.

"If you eat the liver, you get stronger and more virile," Mr. Yoshida said proudly. "I know it's supposed to be dangerous, but if the chef serves it, I'd trust him."

A tiny amount of liver also sometimes gives a numbing sensation, a very mild form of the paralysis that can also kill. Some diners find this thrilling, a kind of fishy high.

Half of the cases of fugu poisoning involve liver, 7 percent the skin, and 43 percent the ovaries, according to the Fugu Research Institute, run by Mr. Kitahama in conjunction with his fugu museum. Few people eat the ovaries on purpose, but fugu testicles are regarded as a great delicacy, perhaps the best way for a man to become more virile. The catch is that fugu are sometimes hermaphrodites with both ovaries and testicles. Thus cooks sometimes mistakenly offer ovaries as testicles, unless they are well versed in fugu private parts.

The Japanese fascination with fugu is a bit odd because in most respects Japan is a risk-averse country. Nominally to protect the health of the Japanese people, although perhaps as a form of protectionism, the Government even bans such common American medications as Tylenol.

The poison in pufferfish, which are also called blowfish or swellfish because when threatened they expand into an ominous round ball, is called tetrodotoxin. This toxin is also in some newts found on the West Coast of the United States and in the Carolinas. Some deaths have been reported among people swallowing the newts in America.

To a foreign palate, it is not obvious why people spend $40 to $300 per person for a dinner of fugu. The raw fugu slices, or sashimi, have an interesting texture but little taste, and fugu testicles are disconcertingly mushy as well as tasteless.

Before they are allowed to prepare fugu, Japanese chefs must pass a rigorous examination that insures their familiarity with fugu sexual anatomy. Fugu restaurants like Zuboraya in Osaka dispose of toxic organs in special locked barrels that are taken away to be burned by specialists in hazardous waste.

Kiyoharu Hayashi, the head chef at Zuboraya, whose three outlets go through 4,400 pounds of pufferfish on a busy day, insisted that restaurant patrons face no danger. With a dig at Britain's problems with mad cow disease, he mused, "Maybe now fugu is safer than hamburger."

Photo: Kiichi Kitahama, a chef, shows off some specimens in his museum of fugu, or pufferfish. Because fugu poisoning now kills very few people, he says he has accomplished his goal and will be closing the museum. (Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times) Map shows the location of Kishiwada, Japan.