Since the 17th century, Hiroshima Prefecture has been renowned for its nori seaweed cultivation in the vast fishing grounds of the Seto Inland Sea. The quality and taste of the seaweed owe a great deal to the cultivation process and the quality of the waters in which the seaweed was grown – one is tempted to say the word ‘terroir’ – so the region has something unique, a competitive advantage that it has continued to exploit to this day. When land reclamation led to the disappearance of the tidal flats used to grow nori, new techniques emerged, such as cultivation using nets on wheels and lifting the nets out to sea to artificially reproduce the alternating tides.

Although the Mimura family has been growing nori seaweed since this period, it was 2 centuries later, in 1918, that Masutaro Mimura founded a company to collect the seaweed from producers and sell it, a company that his son Yoshito transformed into the current Mikuniya House in 1948.

In addition to the obvious quality of the products, which are selected from all over Japan, particularly at limited nori auctions, Mikuniya’s passion is also expressed in its choice to sell nori without any chemical additives and in its practice of fair trade with producers.