VOX POPULI: Healthy 'rods of light' grace the winter table

People never tire of broiled negi (Japanese green onion), according to a haiku by Hitomi Okamoto. Indeed, negi is the first vegetable that comes to my mind that decidedly improves with broiling. The combination of the sweetness of the heat-softened pulp and the delightfully slippery texture of the skin is exquisite enough to make me glad to be alive.

When finely chopped and served raw as a relish, negi packs a lot of "bite." I am always amazed by its complete transformation from sharp and intense flavors to mild and sweet tastes when it has been cooked. It reminds me of someone who is dead serious at work but can completely let his or her hair down when it's time to play. Negi deserves to be called an "all-round" vegetable.

I understand that negi is a good cure for the common cold, too.

Professor Toshimitsu Hayashi and his team at the Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Toyama recently confirmed the vegetable's medicinal properties.

Using two groups of mice, both infected with Type-A influenza virus, the team administered negi extracts to only one group.

According to Hayashi, the extracts not only reduced the virus in those mice to one-third the level of those that were not treated with the extracts, but also generated nearly three times more antibodies in the former group than the latter.

"Some substance in negi must have the effect of preventatively enhancing the body's immune system," Hayashi said.

Negi has long been considered a cold cure in Japanese folk medicine, and it appears we have a good basis to believe this now. Some zoos already feed negi to chimpanzees that don't do well in cold weather.

There are not many good medicines that taste good. Let's leave it to Hayashi and his mice to figure out what in the negi is doing the good, and how it is doing it. Now is the perfect season to enjoy the different varieties of green and white negi to our hearts' content. Whether it's Shimonita negi from Gunma Prefecture or Kujo negi from Kyoto, the bitter cold improves their flavor.

Negi is also a seasonal keyword in haiku poetry. Here's a gem by Momoko Kuroda: "I'm chopping white negi/ A rod of light."

With the arrival of February, we should probably expect only two or three more cold spells. Whatever part of Japan they come from, it's the season for all those "rods of light" to grace our stores.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 1

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.