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lust because sushi is available, in some form or anoth- 1
CULTURE SPLASH

el; in exclusive Fifth Avenue restaurants, in baseball sta-
diums in Los Angeles, at airport snack carts in Ams-
terdam, at an apartment in Madrid (delivered by
motorcycle), or in Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv, or Moscow,
doesn't mean that sushi has lost its status as Japanese
cultural property. Globalization doesn't necessarily
homogenize cultural differences nor erase the salience
of cultural labels. Quite the contrary, it grows the fran-
chise. In the global economy of consumption, the brand
equity of sushi as Japanese cultural property adds to the
cachet of both the country and the cuisine. A Texan
Chinese-American restauranteur told me, for example,
that he had converted his chain of restaurants from Chi-
nese to Japanese cuisine because the prestige factor of
the latter meant he could charge a premium; his clients
couldn't distinguish between Chinese and Japanese
employees (and often failed to notice that some of the
chefs behind his sushi bars were Latinos).
The brand equity is sustained by complicated flows
of labor and ethnic biases. Outside of Japan, having
Japanese hands (or a reasonable facsimile) is sufficient
warrant for sushi competence. Guidebooks for the
current generation of Japanese global wandervogel
sometimes advise young Japanese looking for a job in
a distant city to work as a sushi chef; U.S. consular
offices in Japan grant more than 1,000 visas a year to
sushi chefs, tuna buyers, and other workers in the
global sushi business. A trade school in Tokyo, oper-
ating under the name Sushi Daigaku (Sushi University)
offers short courses in sushi preparation so "students"
can impress prospective employers with an imposing cer-
tificate. Even without papers, howevel; sushi remains
firmly linked in the minds of Japanese and foreigners
alike with Japanese cultural identity. Throughout the
world, sushi restaurants operated by Koreans, Chinese,
or Vietnamese maintain Japanese identities. In sushi
bars from Boston to Valencia, a customer's simple greet-
ing in Japanese can throw chefs into a panic (or drive
them to the far end of the counter).
On the docks, too, Japanese cultural control of
sushi remains unquestioned. Japanese buyers and
"tuna techs" sent from Tsukiji to work seasonally on
the docks of New England laboriously instruct foreign
fishers on the proper techniques for catching, handling,
and packing tuna for export. A bluefin tuna must
approximate the appropriate kata, or "ideal form," of
color, texture, fat content, body shape, and so forth,
all prescribed by Japanese specifications. Processing
requires proper attention as well. Special paper is sent
from Japan for wrapping the fish before burying them Liquid assets: A diver ropes a bluefin tuna caught in a net.

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