Sakuramasu and yamame are the same fish. As fry they fight over territory, and the ones that lose go down to the sea. Those become sakuramasu, cherry salmon. The ones that win stay in the river and become yamame. The name comes from the timing and from the color: fattened at sea, they run back up the rivers around the time the cherries flower, and the flesh is the same pink. Yamagata has designated it the fish of the prefecture.

The dish is steamed sakuramasu with boiled nira laid alongside and a sauce poured over, finished with ginger on top.

The sauce is the part that surprises. Unlike the Kyoto style of ankake, this one is cold, and it is sweet.

The explanation is trade. The kitamaebune ships ran along this coast in the Edo period, and the western style of ankake came to Shonai with them. Sugar and kudzu starch were both expensive then, which made this food for guests rather than for a family. It is still what appears at the Sakata festival and at the Tsuruoka Tenjin festival in May, alongside grilled trout and simmered bamboo shoots, in every house in the district. A fish that lost a fight as a fingerling and left comes back upriver and onto the festival table.