The name is a measurement. Eight cho west of Okazaki castle, about eight hundred and seventy metres, there was a village, and the village's name became the name of the miso.

No rice and no barley go into it. The entire soybean crop is turned to koji, and then only salt and water are added. It is packed into a wooden vat six feet across — about the height of a person, laid on its side — pressed down to drive the air out, and then stones are stacked on top of it in a cone until the mouth of the vat is closed under their weight.

Then it is left. Two summers and two winters, more than two years, without being touched. What comes out is nearly black, and it has an astringency that lighter misos do not — the salt was pushed high to keep it from spoiling over that length of time, and the flavour follows from that decision.

Two houses in Okazaki still make it, Maruya and the firm known as Kakukyu, standing across the road from one another. A distance became a name, and inside that distance there are two producers left. It is an extraordinarily small piece of ground to have given its measurement to something sold across the country, and it has stayed that small the whole time.