We clarified a relationship between the traditional dietary habit characteristics of consuming mackerel and the grading of mackerel during the pre-modem era, as well as searching for the influence of the traditional dietary habit of consuming mackerel with respect to the early modem times through literature research. In the pre-modem era, salted mackerel was part of the ordinary diet for average people, and Sashisaba was used as festive food for Ikimitama regardless of people’s social status. Sashisaba was prepared by cutting raw mackerel in the back, removing the internal organs, putting salt on it and drying it, followed by putting two mackerels together. Ikimitama was an annual event on July 15th for celebrating our parents’ health and happiness. Mackerel was graded as a low-quality fish (ge-uo) when raw or salted and a high-quality fish (jou-uo) when salted, dried, and paired as Sashisaba. Therefore, Mackerel can be expressed as “A fish with mobility far its value." It has been demonstrated that one of the reasons why Sashisaba was eaten at the time of the Ikimitama festival was because mackerel in the form of Sashisaba was considered a high-quality fish. The dietary habit with a dual character―for both an ordinary diet and a non-ordinary diet―continued into early modem times.
