History and Lore

Even though wasabi resembles horseradish in flavor and is often called Japanese horseradish, the popular condiment plants are unrelated to each other except for both being members of the sprawling family Brassicaceae. Valued for its finger-thick green rhizomes, wasabi, one of the rarer and more difficult food plants to grow, has been cultivated in Japan for over a millennium. It was found wild from Sakhalin, the first major island to the north of Japan, all the way south to Kyushu, the third largest and most southwestern island in the Japanese archipelago. Early texts on Japanese medicinal herbs praised wasabi as an antidote to food poisoning and a disease preventative. Although the plant is still harvested in the wild, several cultivars are grown commercially in Japan, and, in more recent times, in North America and New Zealand.