Who Is The Yam-Soup Shop Husband (The Tororo Soup Shop Husband)?
The tororo soup seller who starts a marital brawl
The Teahouse Keeper of Mariko
The Yam-Soup Shop Husband is the owner of a teahouse in Shank's Mare that serves tororo soup, a specialty made from grated yam, in the post town of Mariko (also known as Maruko, in today's Shizuoka City). He is never named, but he sets off the uproar that costs Yaji and Kita their meal.
After the two order tororo soup, he starts arguing with his wife right in front of them, and it turns into an all-out physical fight. Tororo gets flung everywhere in a slippery, slimy mess. The pair have to leave without ever tasting the specialty they were looking forward to. In a work where the heroes usually cause the trouble, this funny scene puts them on the receiving end.
Mariko's tororo soup has been famous along the Tokaido since the Edo period, and it appears in a haiku by Matsuo Basho and in Utagawa Hiroshige's The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.
