Research shows dragonflies have long been on menu in northeast Japan

Research has shed light on a previously little-known insect-eating tradition in parts of the Tohoku region in Japan's northeast, where dragonflies have been consumed as both delicacies and for medicinal purposes.

Shuji Watanabe, a senior curator at the Iwate Prefectural Museum, compiled a field report that describes how dragonflies have long been eaten by locals in parts of Iwate and Akita prefectures.

Associate professor Ryohei Sugahara, an expert in human entomophagy, or the eating of insects, called Watanabe's report "intriguing as eating adult dragonflies is rare."

One woman in her 70s, born and raised in the village of Kunohe, Iwate Prefecture, recalled her elementary schooldays when she ate dragonflies a few times with friends. "I was told that dragonflies were good for my health because they are gods," she said.

"When we would play near the mountains or rivers after school, we caught dragonflies and ate them like that after pulling off their wings. There was nothing odd about it because we were eating wild edible fruits like chocolate vines and freshwater crabs, too."

Watanabe discovered that dragonflies were often plucked out of the air by hand midflight, after which they would be consumed by sucking on the de-winged bodies.

A woman in her 20s from Odate, Akita, talked about eating a dragonfly when she was in middle school. "I opened the chest of the insect by pulling on both sides while holding it near its wings and then sucking out the insides," she said.

Although she could not recall the taste, she said "it was like a (sashimi) chicken tender."

The woman "likely ate the flight muscles," said Sugahara, an associate professor at Hirosaki University in Aomori Prefecture who is familiar with entomophagy in the Tohoku region. "My guess is she ate it more like a snack."

Watanabe heard about the practice of eating dragonflies from a colleague seven or eight years ago and began to interview local people in 2020. In the three and half years that followed, he found five cases in Iwate and one case in Akita, ranging from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Additional literature-based studies by Watanabe revealed that dragonflies had been used as medicine in various parts of Japan since ancient times. In Iwate, there is a record of burning red dragonflies and turning them into a powder to act as a cough suppressant in children.

While dragonfly larvae were eaten, there had been no evidence of the adults having been consumed raw, he said.

The tradition of eating dragonflies in Tohoku is believed to have mainly involved species such as Sympetrum infuscatum and Sympetrum frequens, observed in various places in Japan.

According to Watanabe, dragonfly larvae are an abundant protein source, while a variety of minerals like calcium are contained in adult dragonflies. "Since they were used for medicinal purposes, children were probably not hesitant to eat them."

It is widely known that people in Japan eat locusts in prefectures such as Nagano and Gunma and bee larvae in Nagano, Aichi, Gifu and other prefectures.

Locusts have also been consumed in Iwate, and "it is said that a variety of insects were also eaten in Yamagata. Though rare now, entomophagy used to be widely practiced in Tohoku," Sugahara said.

Entomophagy is often touted as a potential solution to global food shortages caused by various factors including overpopulation.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report that beetles and other such insects account for 31 percent of the world's insect species eaten. Dragonflies make up only 3 percent, and examples of larvae that appear to be eaten in places such as Laos and Papua New Guinea, are introduced in the report.

"Since the release of my report, I have received information on the consumption of dragonflies in Aomori Prefecture and for medicinal use in the southern part of Miyagi Prefecture," Watanabe said. "I intend to continue my field research as it was possibly practiced more widely than was previously thought."