The second major fish sauce from Japan comes from 能登半島 (noto hanjima), the Noto Peninsula in 石川県 (Ishikawa ken), Ishikawa Prefecture on Japan's west coast, about 4 hours from Tokyo by the famous high speed train.
It also causes great confusion. The area produces two types of fish sauce: いしり (ishiri) and いしる (ishiru).
Ishiri - kaneishi.com
Ishiri is made from 烏賊 (ika) squid entrails on the east side of the peninsula while on the west they tend to make ishiru fish sauce from 鰯 (iwashi), sardines or サバ (saba), mackerel.
Ishiru - six.matrix.jp
Unfortunately, due to the similarity of the names and the fact that people use the two names and two sauces interchangeably, you can never be sure what you're getting.
While Shottsuru is generally considered to be the premium sauce in Japan, that from Noto, by either name, has been the most produced.
On New Year's Day 2024, Noto Peninsula was hit by a Mj7.6 magnitude earthquake which killed over 200 people, injured many more and caused widespread structural and infrastructural damage. Thousands are still camped in emergency shelters, two months later.
Obviously, this had a major effect on sauce production, which mostly takes place in the winter months.
What the long term holds is still uncertain.
