Pomegranate Recipe Book Promotes Fruit for Yamanashi Prefecture

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:45 JST, March 22, 2026

KOFU — A group in Kofu studying the use of pomegranates has created a booklet of recipes for dishes using the fruit in collaboration with a local junior college.

The 51-page booklet introduces 81 recipes, including sushi rolls and parfaits, with color photographs. “We want many people to read it and become familiar with pomegranates,” said Yoshihiro Komiyama, 80, who chairs the group working to make the fruit a specialty of the prefecture.

Komiyama is a former deputy director of the Yamanashi Industrial Technology Center. Having come up with the idea to make the booklet to stimulate demand for pomegranates, he began trying to create pomegranate recipes about 10 years ago in consultation with Yuko Nakagawa, a professor at Yamanashi Gakuin Junior College’s food and nutrition department.

Since commercially grown pomegranates were not readily available, the study group collected the fruit by asking for donations from owners of ornamental pomegranate trees. Recipe development was primarily handled by Nakagawa and the students at the college, while processing tasks such as peeling of the fruits and extracting juice from them were done by members of the group.

“There were many challenges during the course of the development,” Komiyama said. He said it was difficult, for instance, to maintain the juice’s bright red color after heating it or to bring out the fruit’s strong, refreshing acidity.

At the end of each fiscal year, the research group and the junior college held joint meetings to decide which recipes they would introduce.

The booklet was completed in October, and it includes recipes suitable for cafes and restaurants. Among them are California roll sushi and curry using pomegranate juice and the fruit’s pulp-covered seeds, called arils. Sweet desserts like parfait and pound cake also are included.

The sushi is made by mixing pomegranate juice into rice to give it a pale red color and pleasantly sour taste. “It is very delicious,” Komiyama said.

“The booklet features recipes we highly recommend. We hope people will try them at home and discover possibilities pomegranate has as food, and that will lead to the expanded cultivation of the fruit,” he said.

The booklet will be distributed to culinary schools and libraries in the prefecture. To view the recipes, contact the study group by email at mack-tt5@lapis.plala.or.jp.