Death by Fugu (2024)

Disclaimer — In no way am I condoning or recommending that you eat any type of fugu liver. Doing so could kill you.

Late last year in a small restaurant in the rainy backstreets of f*ckuoka Japan, I experienced real fugu for the first time. We had the restaurant completely to ourselves except for two old businessmen drinking whisky highballs at the counter. Behind it stood a solitary and serious looking chef in his 60’s or 70’s … this guy definitely knew what he was doing.

Next to him, a fish-tank full of live squid, and on his cutting board lay a whole pufferfish. I wondered how many of these had sliced up and served in his time…

There was a certain energy in the air, a kind of Russian roulette excitement, which only increased as the sake flowed, and then the first course came … fugu sashimi accompanied by a small dish of fugu skin — this was the good stuff. Mouth numbing, lip tingling, face-slapping fugu. The kind of stuff that would make your granny do cartwheels in the carpark.

Fugu. Also known as pufferfish, porcupine fish, or blowfish, this little bloated ball of ugliness contains one of the most powerful neurotoxins ever known … tetrodotoxin… 1000 times more powerful than cyanide and with no known antidote.

It affects the nervous system and the poisoning has been described as “rapid and violent”, it starts at first with a tingling of the lips and a numbness around the mouth, then paralysis and eventually death.

A good fugu chef however, knows how to prepare this little puffer so that only a small amount of poison makes its way onto the table — just enough to give your lips a little buzz.

The most poisonous parts of the fugu are the liver, intestines, and the ovaries.

But … for many gourmands the fugu liver is seen as the tastiest part of the fish with some saying that the raw fugu liver is even better than foie gras.

Since 1949 it has been compulsory for fugu chefs to have a special license controlled by the Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare (Koseisho) and no one has ever been killed in a fugu “restaurant” since then.

Oh ... except for one guy.

Japanese Living National Treasure and kabuki actor Bandō Mitsugorō VIII.

In 1975 Bandō died after insisting on being served torafugu (tiger blowfish) liver at a restaurant Kyoto.

3 years later the chef who served it was given a suspended 8 year prison sentence and put on 2 years probation.

In 1984 a law was passed forbidding the serving of Fugu liver in Japan.

In March 2015 five men in Wakayama were hospitalized after eating fugu liver. The restaurant was shutdown for only 5 days afterwards.

According to the Japan National Health Ministry a total of 295 people became ill and 3 died after eating fugu on 204 occasions between 2008 and 2018. Almost 80% of these poisonings happened in peoples’ homes when they prepared the fish themselves.

Fugu is usually eaten as sashimi ‘fugusashi’ or as ‘fuguchiri’, which is a hotpot dish made with the flesh of the fish. The name for these two dishes vary in different regional dialects in Japan.

In the straight-shooting dialect of Osaka, the sashimi is called ‘tessa’ and the hotpot ‘tetchiri’ — both derived from the Japanese word ‘teppo’ which means gun. There is a saying in Osaka about eating fugu ….

“Ataru to, ippatsu de shinu” — which means “if you are hit by one bullet you’re dead”

Bang.

Game Over. Thanks for coming.

Actually I have eaten “normal” fugu many times and it is quite common in Japan.

Most good Izakaya (small restaurants/ gastropubs) will serve fugu karaage [think fried chicken (KFC) but with fugu] and you can even buy fugu at the supermarket. It is quite common (although expensive) in winter for people to make fugu nabe (pufferfish hotpot) at home.

While we are on the topic of supermarket fugu — in early 2018 the town of Gamagori in Aichi prefecture in central Japan was put on red alert when they discovered a local supermarket had sold five packs of Fugu fish without removing the livers. This was all over the TV here in Japan. The local authorities blasted it out all over the town’s PA system (the same one that’s used for North Korean missile attacks, typhoon and tsunami warnings and telling kids out playing that it’s 6pm and time to go home) and eventually all but two were recovered.

Many news sources reported it as a mistake but when reporters interviewed the manager of the supermarket, the old guy said ….

“We’ve been selling [fugu liver] for decades up to now. There hasn’t been a single poisoning or any incident.” Sora News 24

Hence to say a few members of the public were a little angry on twitter

Oh? Well, no problem then… jackass.”
“For decades?!”
“This stupid old man is messed up.”
“Saying it’s been okay until now? That isn’t a reason.”
“Even if the guy is personally sure it’s safe, it’s still illegal.”
“Hey grandpa, how about you eat it then?”
“I wonder if this place even has a license.”

The species of fugu sold at that particular supermarket was a blunthead pufferfish (yorito fugu) — which is ‘said’ to have no poison in its liver and was sold freely until 2006 … when they did a study that showed that there was, in fact, some toxicity in its liver. Sora News 24

Researchers have found that it is not the actual fugu itself that is poisonous but rather the food that it eats that holds tetrodotoxin-laden bacteria. The fugu builds up a resistance and this is what makes the fish poisonous.

So what happens when you farm fugu and feed them different fugu food?

Well they have been doing this in Japan for quite some time.

From 2000–2008 Tamao Noguchi, who is a marine toxin specialist at Tokyo Healthcare University and one of Japan’s leading fugu experts, conducted research on 7000 farmed fugu from seven different prefectures in Japan. All the fish were fed food that was free of tetrodotoxin-laden bacteria and not one fish tested as poisonous. New York Times

Despite the research showing that farmed fugu liver is not toxic, health authorities, the National Fugu Association, and also the Shimonoseki Fugu Association have said that legalising (farmed) fugu liver will never ever happen.

The town of Shimonoseki is Fugu central. Every year in February they hold a blowfish festival. Shinto prayers are said for the souls of the dead fish and a number of fugu are caught and released again into the ocean on this day. The town has ten processing factories that slice up and de-liver more fugu than anywhere else on the planet.

Due to overfishing, wild fugu accounts for about only 10% of the total number of fugu sold in Japan. That means that most of the fugu processed by ‘specialist’ chefs in Shimonoseki is farmed. New York Times

But … there is certain area of Kyushu where it is possible to actually eat (maybe farmed, maybe not) pufferfish liver. Although it is technically illegal, the health authorities kind of turn a blind eye. The town of Usuki in Oita is famous for serving fugu liver underneath the radar …. there is no liver ‘as such’ on the menu but all you need to do is ask.

Ok so let’s face it — the gamble with death is a major part of what makes eating fugu fun. Without the world’s most deadly neurotoxin … meh … it’s just another tasty fish.

So if most of it is farmed and not fun at all — where should you go for your tasty dose of tetrodotoxin? My advice is to go high end. A good chef at an expensive fugu restaurant will know a wild puffer from a farmed one and this is your best bet for getting happy horse lips like Mr. Ed’s.

And remember when you are eating fugu, you’ll be dining above royalty as you are eating the one food in Japan that the emperor himself is not allowed ... Although I do wonder now that Emperor Akihito has retired, if he is skipping off straight to the heart (or liver) of a fine fugu restaurant.

Until next time … peace, love and pufferfish …