Since the 17th century, Hiroshima Prefecture has been renowned for its cultivation of nori seaweed in the vast fishing grounds of the Seto Inland Sea. The quality and taste of the seaweed owe much to the cultivation process and the quality of the waters in which the seaweed is grown – one is tempted to use the word "terroir" –, so the region has something unique, a competitive advantage that it has continued to exploit to this day. When land reclamation eliminated the tidal flats used for cultivating nori, new techniques emerged, such as net farming on wheels and lifting the nets offshore to artificially replicate the tidal cycle.
If the Mimura family has been cultivating nori seaweed since this period, it was 2 centuries later, in 1918, that Masutaro Mimura founded a company tasked with collecting seaweeds from producers and selling them, a company that his son Yoshito would transform into the current Mikuniya House in 1948.
Besides the obvious quality of the products selected throughout Japan, especially during restricted nori auctions, Mikuniya House's passion is also expressed in the choice to sell nori without any chemical additives and in the practice of fair trade with the producers.