Family History ~Tokachi Daizu Toyo Komachi~

Tokachi soybeans Toyokomachi

Toyokomachi from Tokachi, Hokkaido, has finally arrived in Singapore for the first time!

Because of its high sucrose content, it is said to be ideal for boiled beans (such as boiled beans or hijiki), but its sweetness is on a par with Ryuho. However, children will love its soft texture and bean-like flavor.

It is paler in colour than Ryuho, has a plump body and is slightly larger when returned to water.

If you use it in simmered dishes like hijiki, it will definitely stand out as a supporting ingredient! We hope you will enjoy the sweetness of the beans themselves without adding any unnecessary sugar.

Imported soybeans are best suited for processing, as they do not retain their shape. If you want to eat the beans themselves, we recommend Inazo Select's domestically grown soybeans.

Hokkaido soybeans are already expensive at wholesale prices, and the cost of shipping them from Hokkaido to Akita is not insignificant, so the price is a little high, at $6 for 300g.

Toyokomachi came all the way from Obihiro to the planet. His name is written in kanji as "Toyo Komachi." His mother is "Karafuto No. 1" and his father is "Toyosuzu."

Well.

Karafuto is now Sakhalin.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan took possession of the southern half of Sakhalin and established the Karafuto Prefectural Government in Hokkaido. There, it built a large town called Toyohara with a population of 37,000, and even had an agricultural experiment station.

Karafuto No. 1 and Toyohara, the father of Toyosuzu, were also varieties improved there before the war.

Karafuto No. 1 is a variety with excellent cold resistance, and it was transported to the Obihiro Agricultural Experiment Station in Hokkaido in 1944.

This was just before the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact was abolished. The whole of Japan was burning with incendiary bombs and food shortages were becoming serious.

As is still the case today, Hokkaido focused on field crops, wheat, and soybean cultivation. Increasing food production was an urgent issue, and great expectations were placed on the Sakhalin No. 1, which could withstand the extreme cold.

Her father, Toyosuzu, was born in Obihiro in 1966, but his father ( Toyo Komachi's grandfather), also named Toyohara, came to Obihiro in 1946.

In fact, it was after the Potsdam Declaration was accepted that the military forced the people of Sakhalin to "stay and commit suicide" in order to delay the Soviet invasion of Hokkaido .

The Battle of Karafuto ended on August 25, 1945. How on earth did my grandfather end up being brought back to Obihiro from the chaotic Toyohara Agricultural Experiment Station after the war ?

When they barely escaped from Karafuto with their lives, it must have been quite a heartbreaking decision for them to leave Toyohara behind...

When you imagine the tear-jerking passion of Shimayama , the agricultural research laboratory employee, who risked his life, it seems like a book could be written about the love story between them and Karafuto No. 1 and the Toyosuzu couple .

At that time, it was probably worth risking one's life to retrieve soybeans, which can even withstand the climate of Sakhalin, from the Soviet Union.

This couple, who returned from Karafuto, had a grape called Toyokomachi, born in 1975. They began planting it in 1987.

"Yutaka" comes from his parents' hometown, Toyohara. "Komachi" came from around the time when Akita Komachi rice cultivation began in earnest in Akita, so he was probably hoping to catch a second loach.

Komachi was a title for "beauty" in the Heian period, so it means Toyohara Beauty.

She inherited the Sakhalin bloodline beautifully.

The soybeans grew into beautiful soybeans that are resistant to cold and parasites (soybeans have insects that attach to their roots), are fair in color, large, and attractive, and have a delicate texture, which is indicative of the origin of their name.

And now, 76 years after the war, it has crossed the sea and arrived in Seongju in the Reiwa era.

Now, the motto for the mRNA vaccine is "Have you had the Pfizer shot?"

Its developer is Dr. Katrin Kariko of Germany's BioNTech, who emigrated from Hungary, where communism was collapsing, to the United States and then Germany, "hiding money inside a stuffed animal and barely escaping death."

Therefore, the question should have been whether it would be Moderna or BioNTech, but it was Pfizer of the United States, which is responsible for large-scale clinical trials and production and sales, that took all the credit.

In any case, the future is a collection of the past, and there is no way to know how things will turn out.

There was a bloody war against communism. If Shimayama had not escaped from Karafuto and Dr. Kariko had not escaped from Hungary, Toyokomachi at Obihiro Agricultural Experiment Station and BioNTech's vaccine would never have been born.