Saijo is a brewing town. The men who worked in the breweries were called bisho here, because the work involves so much water that their clothes were always soaked through. This was what they ate, so it was bisho-nabe. The characters now used, meaning fine sake, were applied only recently.

The seasoning is sake, salt, and pepper. No soy sauce, no miso, nothing else. There is a reason for the restraint, and it is not about elegance. The men ate this in the gaps during brewing, and then went back to tasting. Anything that stayed on the palate would have interfered with the judgment their work depended on.

What goes in is not restrained at all. Pork belly, chicken, gizzard. Chinese cabbage, leek, onion, carrot, shiitake, konnyaku, thick fried tofu.

The meat is fried in oil first, the vegetables follow, and then sake goes in generously. The one rule everybody repeats is that you must not let it stew: this is cooked fast and eaten as it comes. The alcohol burns off, so children eat it too, and it is served now at the sake festival held in the town each October. It was never a winter-only dish for the men who invented it, because their winter was the working season. The reason the flavor was kept quiet is the whole reason the dish exists.