It is called kinpira, and the burdock in it is thick. Not shredded into matchsticks the way the dish is made elsewhere — cut into substantial batons, deliberately, and the explanation offered is that the pieces are meant to suggest the three mountains that stand over this province.

Konjac, pork and shiitake go in with it, all of them things Gunma produces in quantity — the konjac corm in particular has been a fixture of this prefecture's fields for a very long time. Depending on the district you may also find chicken, green pepper, freeze-dried tofu or fried fish cake. There is no fixed version.

It was devised in 1983, for the thirty-eighth National Sports Festival, which was held in the prefecture that year. Somebody was asked to produce a new regional dish built from local products, and this is what they came up with.

So it is about forty years old and was invented for an event. It then did the thing that inventions for events almost never do: it stayed, and became something households actually cook. The phrase regional cuisine is usually taken to mean age. Here it means the opposite — a dish made up on purpose, which took root anyway.