Page 5 - Bestor_2000

3 How Sushi Went Global ]

5,235 metric tons (857from the United States) in slack. U.S. businesses may have written off Japan,
1993. The average wholesale price peaked in 1990 but Americans' taste for sushi stuck. An industry
at 4,900 yen (U.S.$34) per kilogram, bones and all, founded exclusively on Japanese demand survived
which ked out to approximatelyU.S.$33 whole- because of Americans' newly trained palates and a
sale per edible pound. booming U.S. economy.
Not surprisingly, Japanese demand for prime
bluefin tuna-which yields a firm red meat,-light-
ly marbled with veins of fat, highly prized (and A TRANSATLANTIC TUSSLE
priced) in Japanese cuisine-created a gold-rush Atlantic bluefin tuna ("ABT" in the trade) are a
mentality on fishing grounds across the globe wher- highly migratory species that ranges from the equa-
ever bluefin tuna could be found. But in the early tor to Newfoundland, from Turkey to the Gulf of
1990s, as the U.S. bluefin industry was taking off, Mexico. Bluefin can be huge fish; the record is
the Japanese economy went into a stall, then a 1,496 pounds. In more normal ranges, 600-pound
slump, then a dive. U.S. producers suffered as their tuna, 10 feet in length, are not extraordinary, and
high-end export market collapsed. Fortunately for 250- to 300-pound bluefin, six feet long, are com-
them, the North American sushi craze took up the mercial mainstays.

I Free-rangesushi. Fishermen off the coast of Favignana, Sicibhaul a tuna from their nets. Many such outffts are backd by Japanesecapital.

58 FOREIGN POLICY