Some three hundred years ago, when Gamo Tadatomo was transferred to Matsuyama, he brought turnips from Hino in Omi, the district his family came from. The variety took to the soil here, was selected and improved over generations, and became a local product. Its skin is purplish, its flesh white, and nothing about it looks remarkable in the ground.

Pickled in vinegar made from daidai citrus, it changes. The anthocyanin in the skin reacts with the acid and the whole thing turns a clear, ringing scarlet. No dye is involved. The color was always in there, waiting for the right conditions to become visible, which is a fact I have been turning over since I learned it.

It is a fixture of the New Year table in Matsuyama, and households pickled their own. There is a piece of folklore attached: if the first batch of the year comes out with the scarlet burning bright, the year will be a good one. A kitchen result read as an omen.

Masaoka Shiki, who was from here, put it in a haiku. The scarlet turnip, he wrote, and the whole table around it looks like spring. That is roughly what the plate does. In the middle of January, on a tray of dark and pale winter things, one dish is the color of April.