Tessa (Thinly sliced pufferfish sashimi)
Savor the blissful taste of Yamaguchi’s famed fugu.

About Tessa (Thinly sliced pufferfish sashimi)

In Yamaguchi Prefecture, fugu is called “fuku” as a way of wishing for good fortune. Because eating fugu could lead to poisoning, it was likened to a firearm, or “teppō”: the sashimi came to be called “tessa,” and the hot pot “tecchiri.” Fugu is now eaten throughout Japan, but there is a reason Yamaguchi is especially associated with it. The fishing grounds were nearby, and in 1888, Itō Hirobumi, a Yamaguchi native and Japan’s first prime minister, happened to eat fugu there, despite the ban on eating it that had been in place since before the Edo period. Through Itō’s efforts, Yamaguchi became the first prefecture to lift the ban by prefectural order, making fugu available to the public.

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