The sushi business in Japan was almost on its last breath during WaWa2,
just like the fish they used,
but stubborn sushi vendors refused to surrender,
determined to keep the business alive
even while fighting through their own starvation.
Thanks to them, sushi went on to become a dish popular around the world
and the only thing preventing starvation among young professionals in San Francisco.
The sushi scene in the early 1900s was popping like popcorn.
While Japan was visiting its neighbors spreading diplomacy,
Japanese people were visiting the street vendors
that were everywhere in major cities.
Among them were vendors of sushi.
The most common sushi types served in Tokyo were
nigiri, maki, and inari,
and these became synoninymous with the word sushi.
Young workers liked to stop by food stands on their way to the bomb factory
to shove meat and sake down their throats.
To separate themselves from uncultured customers,
some sushi stands tried to look fancy,
like they put the food behind pretty glass covers,
using the Ferrero Rocher strategy to attract a higher class of customers.
I enjoy Ferrero Rocher’s with a nice Merlot myself.
Street vendors often sold sake with their food,
but sushi stands served tea, which paired well with raw fish.
It created a more sophisticated vibe rather than the usual drunk vibe.
Relatively.
Why didn’t they sell sake even though everyone was an alcoholic?
Because drinkers needed a bench to sit on,
and ain’t no self respecting sushi vendor provided benches.
The best sushi stands were built to be moved.
You didn’t need pots or grills to make sushi,
so you could move around to the best spots.
Many stands had wheels.
Buddha said, “One who carries a bench moves very slowly.”
By the 1930s, Tokyo’s entertainment district of Asakusa
was the number one spot for sushi shops and fish genocide.
The first sushi stalls in Asakusa appeared in the 1870s,
and since then they just multiplied like salmonella on raw fish.
Japan was at war with its neighbors at the time,
and the Asakusa district was caught in a fierce battle,
a battle between sushi shops for customers,
and many were lost in those terrible times.
Now war is hell, but at least you get new stuff,
and the Sushi War was no different.
One of the best innovations was that sushi vendors added tempura to their menus.
Some places experimented with meat sushi.
Japan was in an embarrassing Westernboo phase,
so it’s no surprise they played around with Western cuisines,
which were full of meat.
Sushi restaurants got caught up in the fighting too.
These were more fancy sit-down places rather than food stands.
The s--ttalk was legendary.
One famous restaurant owner, Koizumi Seizaburō,
said sushi stands were run by con artists.
He accused them of lying to customers by selling fake ingredients.
Like their bluefin tuna was just tofu with food coloring,
and their squid was just cheap fishcake.
They lacked skill, and none could make a proper nigiri sushi.
Damn, Seizaburō.
The man was biased, but there was a bit of truth.
It was cheaper to open a sushi stand than a restaurant,
so many sushi vendors probably didn’t have formal training.
Elite sushi restaurants went to the fish market
early in the morning to get the freshest ingredients.
If you were a high-end sushi restaurant owner,
you had best not get caught visiting the market at 3 PM.
“Hey aren’t you Kenzo, from Kenzo Sushi? I go there all the time!”
“I apologize to my father.”
The restaurants innovated too.
Some places made their sushi delicious by using the
ground-breaking cooking technique of hiring gorgeous waitresses.
One owner even advertised that his shop had 3 beautiful workers:
his own daughters.
He was very successful.
A man from a family of sushi makers opened a stall called Chin’ya,
then used his profits to start a restaurant called Janome Sushi.
It became so successful that he opened spots all over Tokyo,
becoming the first sushi chain restaurant.
Sushi had secured its spot as the number one snack food,
until the wars caught up with Japan.
In 1939, the war forced the Japanese government
to impose a bunch of restrictions on food, including rationing.
It also banned sushi stands, calling them unsanitary.
It was a huge blow to the sushi community.
SushiCon was never the same.
But in 1944, the government saw all the damage it did and said,
“Oh sorry, we made a mistake,
we meant to ban all restaurants.”
And they did.
By that point in WaWa2, Japan was actually doing
really well according to Japanese propaganda.
Thankfully, the ban didn’t hurt restaurants much
because the lack of food would’ve forced them to close anyways.
As rations got smaller, people got thinner.
Sushi chefs came face to face with extinction.
And huffed in defiance.
These sushi men who descended from Naruto never gave up.
They found ways around the law.
Some restaurants opened in secret,
charging high prices for the sushi addicts
who just couldn’t stay away from one last tuna nigiri.
Some sushi vendors kept the profession alive
by opening their stalls in the black markets.
Black markets were actual markets that formed
throughout the cities where vendors sold essentials and food,
because those were getting hard to come by.
Ordinary people who didn’t enjoy dying needed
a place to go to buy the necessities from decent,
respectable sellers who smuggled their products from government storehouses.
Black markets were technically illegal,
but tell that to the starving 10-year-old who just received a Philadelphia Roll.
Buddha said, “In life, it is best not to be a d--k”.
Now the war dealt a big blow to the sushi business,
but it did spread the dish to people who wouldn’t have heard of it.
Sushi chefs fled the bombings of Tokyo to
settle in other parts of the country,
spreading sushi knowledge across Japan.
Japan’s invasion of everything within a 3000 mile radius also exposed its neighbors
to this delicious dish, and in some cases affected the local cuisine.
The delightful Korean rolls called gimbap evolved from makizushi.
It uses sesame oil instead of vinegar and has different fillings.
The black markets continued even after the war, because Japan was still a hot mess.
The Allied Occupation handed out food rations,
but in the early days, it just wasn’t cutting it.
Starving people relied on these markets.
The authorities didn’t try too hard to break up these places.
Seeing people walking the streets buying stolen items
was better than seeing them lying on the streets.
Black market sushi went through innovations that survive even today.
One day, the Sushi Business Association of Tokyo Prefecture had a wild idea,
and convinced the Occupation authorities to allow sushi stands to
accept rice from customers, and make sushi out of it.
They’re so crazy.
So customers started giving sushi vendors about a three-quarters cup of rice,
and for a fee, the vendors would make 10 pieces of sushi for them.
Sushi stalls also began accepting other ingredients
like eggs, shiitake mushrooms, and dried gourd.
This bring your own ingredients model worked so well
that it spread to the rest of Japan.
That was how ten pieces became standard for an order of sushi.
Today, nigiri is usually served in pairs.
That tradition also came out of this time period.
Before the war, nigiri was 2.5 times bigger with a big ol slab of fish on top.
But with the food shortage,
they shrank nigiri to the size it is today,
but served it in pairs.
It was a bit sneaky because it was harder to tell
that there was less fish than before,
and allowed chefs to use whatever small amount of fish
or other ingredients they had available.
After the Occupation, the good times came back.
The refrigerator changed everything.
Before, places far from water didn’t have fresh fish,
but when refrigeration became widely available,
sushi vendors began offering all kinds of seafood.
Sushi restaurants popped up everywhere, offering high quality ingredients.
In 1958, the government gave out chef licenses.
You had to pass an exam to become a chef.
In 1983, the government made a special sushi chef license
for those who thought the previous exam was too easy.
You didn’t need a sushi chef license to open a sushi restaurant,
but (1) you couldn’t officially call yourself a sushi chef,
and (2) each piece of sushi you make is filled with sadness.
Until recently, women couldn’t call themselves sushi chefs.
Even today, you don’t see many female sushi chefs.
It’s considered a man’s job.
People have given all kinds of reasons as to why women make for poor sushi chefs.
Like…they have periods.
You see, the menstrual cycle hormones change
a woman’s sense of taste and smell,
and a chef’s taste and smell are supposed to be stable, unshakeable,
qualities that we know come straight from the peanuts.
Another reason is that women have warm hands, which would make the rice too warm.
This is clearly BS.
Everyone knows women’s hands are perpetually frozen.
This is changing though, not the hands thing the female chef thing.
Today, more women are getting into the sushi profession
by, I believe, learning to entirely suppress their periods.
In modern times, sushi street vendors are no longer as common,
replaced by another type of shop that caters to the same crowd.
Conveyor belt sushi restaurants are now the place to find cheap sushi and cheap people.
The first conveyor belt system was put in a sushi restaurant
called Mawaru Genroku Sushi in 1958.
The owner said he got the idea after visiting a beer factory.
It was a hit
and he would open another 250 branches.
Just a warning if you go to these places though,
there is a small risk of falling victim to sushi terrorism.
That California Roll you’re enjoying might contain
the spit of some clown teenager who thinks he’s a comedian.
If that’s too scary, nowadays you can always
go to supermarkets and convenience stores if you want cheap sushi.
And you can even get gas station sushi, if you want a parasitic infection.
Sushi has come a long way since medieval times.
The history of how sushi and sashimi was invented
and how these dishes blew up is super interesting,
and involves knife masters and secret sushi texts.
Click here to learn about it.
We have a new Emperor on Patreon today: Sarah, all hail Sarah.
We also have some other patrons:
Brian, feh, Josh Carroll, and Tomoe-chan.
Thanks so much you guys.
Alright I love you, and spread the knowledge!