That said, it’s very impressive how thorough you are in considering all the natural possibilities. Great piece.

What surprises me is the Japanese know their fish possibly like no other people in the world and the more rare or difficult of access the catch the more obsessive they are to consume it.

Even the term snakehead’s used by the likes of the Yakuza.

So the vagueness of the ‘origin story’ from a people utterly steeped in traditional details almost suggests to me once upon a time there was another much darker story possibly involving human sacrifice or/and the Ainu a bit like the lack of ‘official’ pig related myths in Hebrew mythology when compared to other nearby mythological systems.