The Setouchi Cookbook is a collection of recipes gathered from the Setouchi region’s food makers—fishermen, farmers, foragers, food artisans, home cooks, and professional chefs—who are leaders of the culinary revolution taking place in Japan’s countryside. The Setouchi Cookbook also includes articles about these food makers, and the places they live, showcasing their efforts to revive heritage foods and traditional ways of making foods, grow new kinds of foods and produce new food products, and make old-time recipes and innovate new dishes by blending culinary styles with the best local ingredients.

Food has always been the Setouchi region’s greatest asset, and there is no other place in Japan that has such an ancient food history nor where food has played such an important role in Japan’s social and economic development. Today, the Setouchi’s food makers are creating some of the best foods ever made in the region in a celebration of the Setouchi’s unique style of light flavors and healthy dishes simply prepared.

There is an ever-increasing number of ways to experience the Setouchi due to the efforts by the Japanese government to promote tourism and by local Setouchi governments and food entrepreneurs to make their region a destination. We encourage you to discover the Setouchi’s foodways and rural byways as traveling across the Setouchi has been made easier by the bridges and roadways built in recent years to connect many of the islands to each other and to the surrounding mainland islands, albeit you can still magically cross the Seto Inland Sea by ferry.