For centuries fugu was banned in Japan, its poison too dangerous to trust — a prohibition tracing back to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. By one account it was Itō Hirobumi, the country's first prime minister, who ate the fish here, was won over, and had the ban lifted. In 1888 Shunpanro became the first restaurant in the nation licensed to serve pufferfish, and it still does, above the Kanmon Strait at the tip of Honshū.
What you eat
The house is built entirely around fugu, the pufferfish Japan once forbade. It comes as a kaiseki progression rather than a single plate, the naturally lean, firm flesh carrying a meal that is as much occasion as dinner. The setting is formal and the cooking measured, in keeping with a restaurant that has treated this fish as fine dining longer than anywhere else.
The hall that ended a war
In 1895 the upstairs great hall became the setting for the peace talks that closed the First Sino-Japanese War, between Itō Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu for Japan and Li Hongzhang for Qing China; the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed under this roof. Hirobumi is said to have named the house himself, for the sight of sailing ships on the strait below. The Japan–Qing Peace Treaty Memorial Hall stands next door, so the history is a few steps from the table.
Who should reserve
Travelers drawn to where history and cuisine occupy the same address, willing to book ahead at a formal, high-end house for a fish that here is inseparable from the nation that once forbade it.
