Ivy Carruth explores Japan’s under-discovered citrus coast, where fruit is treated like fine art and gifted with more ceremony than a bequeathed heirloom
I’m standing not quite far enough under the tree to catch its shade – the sun must surely be pinkening up my shoulders as the man in the threadbare drawstring pants holds out three mandarins. They are, to my eye, identical. Same jewelled hue of lacquered marmalade, same silky dimpled skin, same slight give under the pads of my fingers. He shakes his head at two of them and hands me the third, nods.
“This one. The others need a week.”
“How do you know?” I ask him. To his credit, he doesn’t give me the stink eye; to the contrary, he looks pleased with his esoteric citrus wisdom. Our translator, Mr Murashita, gives the tender peel a rude pinch, one so hard that I almost feel bad for it, and a bright mist of oil brings our noses forward in unison.
“Colour can lie,” the farmer says eventually. “Weight tells the truth.” So does where the fruit sat on the branch, the weather and temperature it caught off the sea, and how the skin smells when you press a thumbnail into it.
This is Ehime Prefecture, one of four regions on the southwestern island of Shikoku. It is to citrus what Bordeaux is to wine. There are more than 40 varieties grown here, terraced up pleated hillsides that fall away, sometimes treacherously, into the Seto Inland Sea. You’ll find one, maybe even two, wrapped like Faberge eggs in your hotel room – culturally significant gifts that represent good fortune and prosperity.
Each has its own loyalists, individual religions with their own liturgy of sweetness-to-acid ratios.
There is perhaps a quiet judgment of anyone still eating regular mikan when Setoka season is on, and to abuse the wine comparison, it’s not unlike the one silently given when someone pairs a chardonnay with a rare steak. Amateur, it screams; except this is Japan, so it’s more of a disdainful whisper.
But orange juice. It’s not so polarising, right? You grab one off the shelf and carry on. The question in my household growing up was always pulp or no pulp, and it seemed this was the great dividing factor, camps where never the two shall meet – thus two jugs in the fridge. In Ehime, you won’t be forced to make such conventional decisions. They’re far beyond that.
I head to Matsuyama, one of the prefecture’s biggest cities and home to the infamous Dōgo Onsen, the oldest onsen in the country, to taste what I never knew I’d been missing.
Inside the thrum of the Dogo Haikara-dori arcade, souvenir shops and cafes lure the eye politely. It’s hot outside, so I buy a hoppy mikan beer at 10Factory to cool down and browse the area, sipping it. But the real reason I’m here is the lure of Ehime no Shokutaku 1970, a narrow shop with white and traffic-cone-orange chequered-tile walls selling only one thing: self-serve tasting paddles of citrus juice.
From the 20 taps on the wall, I choose six to dispense. Mikan, the workhorse, sweet and unbothered. Iyokan, sharper with a bit of perfume to it. Setoka, from citrus that’s thin-skinned and almost indecently juicy. Kawachi Bankan, pale and bitter, almost grapefruit-like, but not? Blood orange, which tastes of red berries, and certainly the Beni Madonna, which, of course, is considered a luxury and (of course) is my favourite.
The reverence for the orchard’s bounty here has a price tag, and it’s not subtle. In late 2020, a crate of the region’s prized Hinomaru mikan sold at a Tokyo auction for close to US$9600 ($16,900), more than 60 times the usual price. Locals describe the best fruit as grown under “three suns”: the one that blazes in the sky, the one reflected off the sea, and the one bounced back again off the stone terrace walls.
If you’re going to venture out to a grove, and you should, some rules mark you instantly if you break them. Don’t squeeze the fruit to test it; you’ll bruise it, and presentation matters (a lot). Clip the stem with secateurs (usually provided); don’t twist and yank, or you’ll tear the dewy skin near the calyx, and the fruit will rot from the wound. Don’t automatically assume they should be refrigerated; some varieties sulk there and lose flavour – so watch, and ask.
I think about that fridge again, the two jugs. In Ehime, they’re arguing about which slope caught more sea light, and which rocky slope held in the most heat to feed the trees. Did this Setoka have two suns or three? Are you the type of person to pair Beni Madonna with breakfast or save it, properly, for someone you owe something to? I’ve got a paddle’s worth of opinions I didn’t know I was capable of having.
Pulp or no pulp was never the question. It was always going to be more complicated, but also far simpler than that.
The writer was hosted by JNTO and Setouchi Tourism.