Research Paper: Sushi Migration

Charlotte Chia-Ying Lee

HUMN 309 Cross Cultural Design

Maxe Fisher

March 25, 2013

Sushi Migration: a look on the migration and evolution of sushi in interbreeding cultures

Abstract

Sushi, a popular Japanese cuisine over the world, is a result of food migration, and it is still evolving itself within Japanese culture. However, the more profound fact is its evolution outside of Japan, such as in North American. The myth (a type of speech according to Roland Bathers) of sushi not only explains the influences of globalization on Japanese cuisine, but the migration of sushi also suggests its easy-adoptability and ever-evolving nature. To serve as a support of Marshall McLuhan’s theory, this research will focus on three aspects. Starting with digging in to the history of sushi, of its traces back to the fourth century in China and then was adopted by the Japanese during the ninth century, and also includes its evolvement in North America in the 1900s. Second, the migration of such a food has been highly affected by globalization. I will explain further by using examples of fish trade (Bluefin tuna) and co-operated fisheries between the Japanese and the Europeans in recent years, and how this phenomenon ties to the evolvement of sushi in Japan. Third, compare the ingredients and rituals in sushi. With all these, we will have a clear understanding that Japanese sushi is itself a product of food migration, and enable us to foresee the possible future of unified food culture.

Introduction: Sushi Migration

What make sushi “sushi”? This is a question reappearing through out my research. The word “sushi” itself is a Japanese word, and this kind of food is also originated from Japan. However, the sushi we know – or to clarify the focus group: the sushi North Americans know, which we assume and strongly believe to be purely Japanese – is actually not so Japanese at all. A few days a go I chatted with a Japanese friend, Yumi, and shockingly realized that what I believed to be Japanese sushi did not exist in Japan. If people (here I mean non-Japanese) go to sushi restaurants (for example the Togo Sushi in Vancouver) expecting to have authentic sushi, for most of the cases, they choose the wrong place. I will provide further details when comparing sushi menus in the later chapter. The problem is, if people go to sushi restaurants and not having the authentic sushi, can we call those “sushi” restaurants? Let’s come back to the question: what make sushi “sushi”? Is it the origin (Japan), the materials, or the eating gesture that make it “sushi”? Surprisingly, from my research, none of them can provide a specifically and absolutely explanation on this matter. I believed that what make sushi “sushi” today is a process of complicated food migration. This sushi migration is still evolving in the world, but we can already see its sprout of food unity.

History of Sushi and its Origin

Before going further to my explanation of unified food culture, we will first dig into the history of sushi from the beginning of its migration. Tori Avey, the author of The History Kitchen column on PBS Food, wrote a clear historical background on sushi in her article “Discover the History of Sushi”. To my surprise, sushi actually originated from China: “A fourth century Chinese dictionary mentions salted fish being placed in cooked rice, causing it to undergo a fermentation process. This may be the first time the concept of sushi appeared in print (Avey).” This quote not only states the beginning of sushi (though it is nothing like the sushi of the present time), it also hints the later evolution of this cuisine. The more surprising thing comes next: “The concept of sushi was likely introduced to Japan in the ninth century, and became popular there as Buddhism spread (Avey)” in order to fulfill Buddhist dietary needs. However, Avey’s article only provides a selective and limited historical background; whereas Lynne Olver, a reference librarian with a passion on food history, validated Avey’s point with greater details in her website (the Food Timeline). Starting with a single-page website, the Food Timeline has grown to more than fifty pages since 1999. Most of the contents were quotes from different books on the same topic. Olver organized the pieces of information in an understandable fashion with short explanations to guide viewers into the texts. Sushi is categorized under Asian-American cuisine, which the title itself suggests the idea of culture migration already. If Avey identifies the food migration from China to Japan, Olver provides more information in relation to the fast food culture of recent centuries. According to Olver’s selections of quotes, thirteen hundreds years ago, preparing sushi can takes from two months to more than a year, and it is not until the seventeenth century that Japanese starts to add vinegar to sushi rice in order to mimic the tartness in a reduced amount of time. “By 1824 a man named Hanaya Yohei conceived the idea of sliced, raw seafood at its freshest, served on small fingers of vinegared rice.” This means that before sushi comes to our understanding of “sushi”, it has already experienced the slow evolution within Japan. Starting as salted fish on rice in China, sushi has finally been adopted as a new type of popular cuisine in Japan (especially in Edo) in the nineteenth century. Even though the Chinese food culture and Buddhism push forward the invention of sushi, it is clear that sushi is a Japanese food rather than a Chinese food or Indian food. However, it is still important to note that sushi is a product of cross culture influence even before it travels to the West. What makes the definition of sushi even more complicated is that history does not stop here.

Western influences break into Japan during World War II. In his book, the Search for Sushi, Carl Chu, who is a Taiwanese-American writer, provides a general idea on this matter. He states that the war not only causes the shortage of Japanese food supplies, the fear of the outbreak of cholera in bombed-out cities even changes the eating behavior of the Japanese: the shortage of food supplies reduces the making of Oshizushi, which requires more rice to make; as the result of the fear, street stalls (something similar to a sushi vender) disappeared in Tokyo, and from then, sushi was only served indoor. Sushi is also the first Japanese food introduced to Postwar America (Chu 10). However, there is difficulty for the Americans to accept raw fish.

“To make sushi similarly palatable, chefs used cooked ingredients like crab and shrimp, and familiar vegetables like avocados and cucumbers. These were, coincidentally, some of the same ingredients in the California Roll, which was invented several decades later (Chu 11).”

I do not consider this as a coincidence, but rather the adoption of foreign cuisine. What I want to argue here is the disappearing of origin. The same as the Japanese adopting Chinese salted fish on rice many centuries ago; the Americans adopt sushi into their culture in a similar fashion. By using local ingredients to fit the taste of the local people, California Roll and Alaska Roll are successful examples in this on-going evolution of sushi. This alternation of ingredients continues the process of sushi evolution. More interestingly, this evolution also happened in Canada, but in an opposite direction. Rumiko Tachibana has done a thorough research on the migration of sushi in North America in her thesis. When the first Japanese immigrants came to Canada during the early twentieth century, they remained eating pure Japanese style meals (Tachibana 53). However, the lack of materials after World War II forced them to incorporate Western food into their diet (Tachibana 54). If the migration arrow points from East to West in the America, the arrow in Canada points in an opposite direction: from West to East. The adaptation speed of sushi of the Americans, though, seems to be faster than the Japanese acceptance of Western cuisine. According to Tachibana, the popularity of sushi spread northward from Los Angeles to Vancouver. Denotatively, it is a spread of popularity of Japanese food; connotatively, it is a spread of westernized sushi. This is exactly what I mean in the introduction. What we call “sushi” in North America, it no longer carries the full identity of authentic Japan. Coming from Japan does not mean it is Japanese; just as originating in China does not mean it is Chinese. Therefore, the origin alone does not make sushi “sushi”.

Materials used in Sushi

Talking about the westernized sushi, there is no reason to skip the ingredients used in sushi making. In this chapter, I will explain more on the false assumption on what is Japanese (and what is not) and compare different sushi menus for its materiality. From my Japanese friend Yumi and Trevor Corson, the author of The Zen of Fish: the story of sushi, from samurai to supermarket, I learned that Japanese makes sushi only with seafood and limited vegetables. Sushi for them is to taste the original flavor of different seafood such as squid, clam, salmon, and tuna, especially for nigiri sushi. Each kind will be consumed according to the seasonality, “which a species is at its fleshiest (Nagayama, Yoda, and Tajima 14).” In Vancouver, people do not care if the salmon or tuna is in season; whereas in Japan, there is a tradition and ritual on sushi-eating practices – I will extend my argument on eating gesture later.

Walter F. Carroll is a professor of sociology at Bridgewater State College. In the bibliography of his research paper, Carroll based his research on sushi, which he claims, “originated” from Japan, to analyze globalization through food culture. The most interesting part in his bibliography, though, is the quote he used from Bestor, which the Bestors “discover[ed] – to [their] surprise – that some of the fresh seafood before [their] eyes was from the United States, Canada, or Southeast Asia (Carroll 452).” Since I have discussed the history of origin, I shift my focus to the ingredients and further my research through Theodore C. Bestor, a professor of anthropology and Japanese Studies at Harvard University who has written widely on the culture and society of Japan. In his article, “How Sushi went Global,” Bestor tied the global fish trade of Bluefin tuna with the migration of sushi. Sushi, for sure, is one of the most recognizable cultural motifs of Japan. Tuna sashimi has become popular because it was seen as healthy and fresh, and the red tuna meat on white rice is like the symbol of the Japanese flag, which clearly defines its identity. However, this is where the false assumption comes into mind. It is important to note that Japan has no local tuna resource. Each year, the Japanese industry spends lots of money on importing tuna. They even cooperate with Europeans by hiring their workers and using their ocean resources to cultivate tunas. Though with this fact, tuna is still symbolically tied with Japanese culture but not Europe or anywhere else where all the fish coming from. If the sushi that considered “authentic” is already a cross-cultural product, the westernized sushi adds another level of complexity on materiality.

A very common problem for Vancouverners when eating sushi is that they may not be able to distinguishing the westernized sushi from authentic sushi. Yumi, my Japanese friend, finds me a sushi menu in Japan, which she considered the most authentic, which Kanda-Edogin is the one. Then there is also Togo Sushi in Vancouver, which comparing with Kanda-Edogin is more like a fast food restaurant. Since ingredients of nigiri sushi are varied from place to place, depending on the local taste and availability of resources, I will focus the comparison within maki rolls. Kanda-Edogin only has ten choices for maki sushi: kappa (cucumber), kampiyou (marinated groud strips), natto (fermented soy beans), oshinko (pickies radish), tekka (tuna), toro (fatty tuna), ume-kyu (plum paste and cucumber), ume-shiso (plum paste and perilla leaf), Futo maki (shrimp, egg, shiitake mushroom, kampiyou, and cucumber), and Tokyo maki (shrimp, egg, cucumber with mayounerse sauce). From the list, it is clear that the ingredients are very limited in traditional maki. On the other hand, Togo Sushi has a wide range of thirty-four choices in maki alone. The ingredients contain avocado, cooked meat, tempura, and even fruit (mango). According to Yumi, Japanese does not put tempura, teriyaki, or unagi (and some of them with lettuce) in sushi; they should be topped on a bowl of cooked rice, and of course never lettuce. By this, I am not opposing the quality of Togo Sushi. In fact, I love their unagi roll even though it is nothing like a traditional Japanese maki. The differences of ingredients used prove that sushi has been successfully adopted in North American culture. Vinegared rice and nori are probably the only reason that we still call it sushi, but this is no longer the case in Figure I.

Figure I: Blueberry sushi with honey chili.

Figure I, Blueberry sushi with honey chili, is a maki recipe from The Complete Book of Sushi written by Hideo Dekura, Brigid Treloar, and Ryuichi Yoshii. Except sushi rice, no other ingredients can relate this sushi to Japanese culture; plus Japan is not the only rice-eating country anyway. After the astonishment of looking at this image, it is impossible not ask the question again: what make sushi “sushi”? If this blueberry sushi is considered “sushi”, despite its authenticity, sushi becomes a form of small bites – similar to any other kinds of finger foods such as tapas, mezze, or antipasti. I do not think authentic sushi will disappear within food culture, but it will, and is still, co-exist with the evolution of its kind. If so, the ingredients do not make sushi “sushi” either.

Rituals in Sushi

What I mean by ritual includes the tradition and eating gesture. In this chapter, I will compare the traditional way of eating sushi with the fast food sushi in North America. According to Corson, who I mentioned earlier, not only the North Americans but also some of the Japanese themselves might not know the most authentic way of eating sushi. I am not saying there is no authentic sushi in North America. What I want to focus on is the influence of fast food culture shown through the sushi-eating behavior especially in Vancouver. After an immigrated to Canada in the year of 2007, I discover that it is a very common thing to have sushi as your lunch or dinner. Being an Asian, sushi never equals to a formal meal, and only appears either on street stalls (Taiwanese style) or higher class restaurants (authentic Japanese style). In Vancouver, sushi is consumed as if it is a sandwich or hamburger, though considerably healthier. Last chapter I have already discussed the differences between the ingredients of authentic sushi and westernized sushi. But beside the materiality, Vancouverners seem to not knowing the authentic way of eating sushi. Sushi in Vancouver is consumed simply as one of the fast food product; as if there is no need to bother of learning the ritual it carries, which as a result, makes many mistakes. For example, soy sauce is usually added while making the sushi and it is not necessary to dip it again; many people will mix wasabi with soy sauce to increase the pungency but is actually reducing it; Gari is not a side dish but to cleanse the remaining flavor on the tongue (Corson 331-332). Even though not everyone knows these, sushi is still sushi. It does not change its identity according the different eating behavior. Hence, the making of “sushi” does not rely on the way it is consumed.

Conclusion

Remembering back to the history of sushi, Japanese adopts salted fish on rice from China by evolving it into a new type of cuisine: sushi. In the similar fashion, North American adopts sushi by turning it into a fast food culture. If the origin, the ingredients, and the eating behavior no longer explain the identity of sushi, sushi becomes a product of globalization. Therefore I argued that the sushi evolution is on its midway through food unity – note that it is a unity with variation because the authentic sushi has not die.

Work Cited

Avey, Tori. “Discover the History of Sushi.” The History Kitchen. PBS Food, 5 Sept. 2012. Web. 26 Feb. 2013.

Bestor, Theodore. “How Sushi Went Global.” Foreign Policy. November/December. 2000: 54-63. Print.

Carroll, Walter. “Sushi: Globalization through Food Culture: Towards a Study of Global Food Network.” Kansai University Institutional Repository, 31 Mar. 2009. Web. 26 Feb. 2013. < http://www.icis.kansai-u.ac.jp/data/journal02-v1/31_Carroll.pdf >

Carson, Trevor. The Zen of Fish: the story of sushi, from samurai to supermarket. Taipei: Owl Publishing, 2008. Print.

Chu, Carl. The Search for Sushi: a Gastronomic Guide. Manhattan Beach: Crossbridge Publishing Co, 2006. Print.

Dekura, Hideo, Brigid Treloar, and Ryuichi Yoshii. The Complete Book of Sushi. Sydney: Lansdowne Publishing Pty Ltd., 2000. Print.

Kanda-Edogin. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. <http://www.kanda-edogin.com/top-page-e.htm>

Ngayama, Kazuo, Hiroshi Yoda, and Kasuhiko Tajima. Sushi. Tokyo: PIE International, 2011. Print.

Olver, Lynne. “History notes – Asian American cuisine.” Food Timeline: food history research service. Personal Website, Lynne Olver, 2 Feb. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.

Tachibana, Rumiko. “’Processing’ Sushi / Cooked Japan: Why Sushi Became Canadian.” University of Victoria, 30 Dec. 2008. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.

Togo Sushi: Japanese sushi restaurant. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. <http://www.togosushi.ca/>