Page 3 - Bestor_2000

L
How Sushi Went Global

Recently, the federation launched "Tuna Day" Pokimon-have increasingly saturated North Amer-
(Maguro no hi), providing retailers with posters and ican and indeed the entire world's consumption and
recipe cards for recipes more complicated than "slice popular culture. Against all odds, so too has sushi.
and serve chilled." Tuna Day's mascot is Goro-kun, a In 1929, the Ladies' Home Journal introduced
colorful cartoon tuna swimming the Australian crawl. Japanese cooking to North American women, but dis-
Despite the playful contemporary tone of the creetly skirted the subject of raw fish: "There have
mascot, the date selected for Tuna Day carries much been purposely omitted.. . any recipes using the del-
heavier freight. October 10, it turns out, commem- icate and raw tuna fish which is sliced wafer thin and
served iced with attractive garnishes.
mese] . . .might not sound so entire-
ly delicious as they are in reality."
Fromanexotic, almost unpalatableethnicspecialty, ~ittlementionofan~~a~anesefood
appeared in U.S. media until well
then to haute cuisine of the most rarefied sort, after World War 11. BY the I~~OS,
articles on sushi began to show up in
sushi has become not just cool, but popular. lifestyle magazines like Holiday and
Sunset. But the recipes they suggest-
ed were canapis like cooked shrimp
orates the date that tuna first appeared in Japanese on caraway rye bread, rather than raw fish on rice.
literature, in the eighth-century collection of imperi- A decade lateq howeveq sushi was growing in pop-
a1 court poetry known as the Man'yoshu--one of the ularity throughout North America, turning into a
towering classics of Japanese literature. The neat sign of class and educational standing. In 1972, the
twist is that October 10 today is a national holiday, New York Times covered the opening of a sushi bar
Sports Day. Goro-kun, in the elite sanctum of
the sporty tuna, scores a New York's Harvard
promotional hat trick, Club. Esquire explained
suggesting intimate con- the fare in an article titled
nections among national "Wake up Little Sushi!"
culture, healthy food for Restaurant reviewers
active lives, and the fam- guided readers to Man-
ily holiday meal. hattan's sushi scene,
Outside of Japan, including innovators like
tuna, especially raw tuna, Shalom Sushi, a kosher
hasn't always had it so sushi bar in SoHo.
good. Sushi isn't an easy Japan's emergence on
concept to sell to the the global economic
uninitiated. And besides, scene in the 1970s as the
North Americans tend to business destination du
think of cultural influence jour, coupled with a
as flowing from West to rejection of hearty, red-
East: James Dean, base- meat American fare in
ball, Coca-Cola, McDon- favor of healthy cuisine
ald's, and Disneyland like rice, fish, and veg-
have all gone over big in etables, and the appeal
Tokyo. Yet Japanese cul- of the high-concept aes-
tural motifs and materi- thetics of Japanese design
al-from Kurosawa's The all prepared the world
Seven Samurai to Yoda's for a sushi fad. And so,
Zen and Darth Vader's B from an exotic, almost
armor, from Issey unpalatable ethnic spe-
Miyake's fashions to Nin- '5 cialty, then to haute cui-
tendo, Playstation, and A dash of civilizations sine of the most rarefied