History of sushi
The earliest form of the dish, today referred to as narezushi, was created in Southeast Asia from where it spread to surrounding countries.
[1][14] Passages mention ancient Japanese people in comparison with a son of the legendary King Shao Kang who was ruling over the Yangtze delta:[15]Men great and small, all tattoo their faces and decorate their bodies with designs.
A son of the ruler Shao Kang of Xia, when he was enfeoffed as lord of Kuaiji, cut his hair and decorated his body with designs in order to avoid the attack of serpents and dragons.
Later, however, the designs became merely ornamental.During the third century, Chinese travelers in Japan recorded examples of Wu traditions including ritual teeth-pulling, tattooing and carrying babies on backs.
[1] Kuai, sashimi, and hoe can be traced back to Dongyi, a pre-Han Baiyue cultural area in East China.
Confucius was born near present-day Nanxin Town, Qufu, Shandong, China, and he was known to have enjoyed eating raw meat and fish.
[18] In the Yōrō Code (養老律令, Yōrō-ritsuryō) of 718, the characters for "鮨" and "鮓" are written as a tribute to the Japanese imperial court, and although there are various theories as to what exactly this food was, it is possible that it referred to narezushi.
[20] During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), the Japanese invented a style of sushi called namanare or namanari (生成、なまなれ、なまなり), which means "partially fermented".
[7] Today's style of nigirizushi (握り寿司), consisting of an oblong mound of rice with a slice of fish draped over it, became popular in Edo (contemporary Tokyo) in the 1820s or 1830s.
[7] In 1958, Yoshiaki Shiraishi opened the first conveyor belt sushi restaurant (回転寿司, kaiten-zushi) named "Genroku Zushi" in Higashi-Osaka.
[31] A later book Meihan Burui (名飯部類, 1802) describes the process of making makizushi: "Spread asakusa-nori on the board, place the sushi rice on it.
Miller, food historian of Lipscomb University has written that a wave of Japanophilia in American high society resulted in the serving of sushi at social functions.
Popularity of Japanese food peaked around 1905 when it was being served at Japanese-themed social gatherings across the United States, including in midwestern cities such as Minneapolis, Minnesota, St. Louis, Missouri and Bismarck, North Dakota.
[42] According to Miller, the earliest published mention of sushi eaten by an American, in America, was an 18 August 1904 article in the Los Angeles Herald about a luncheon served in Santa Monica by the socialite Fern Dell Higgins.
[42] After the outbreak of World War II, Japanese-American restaurants on the West Coast were generally forced to close and sell off their businesses due to internment orders on their proprietors.
[50][51] Some sources accept the claim made by a man named Noritoshi Kanai that he was the person instrumental in persuading Kawafuku's owner to start the sushi section.
Kanai headed the Tokyo-based arm of Mutual Trading, an importer of Japanese food ingredients that served Kawafuku and other restaurants.
[52][51] The first sushi chef in America according to this account was Shigeo Saito, and some sources paint the chef as the principal figure who brought real sushi to the U.S.[49] Articles that gave positive views of tourism to Japan and Japanese cuisine began appearing in the media in the United States in the 1950s, paving the way to the public accepting different kinds of Japanese cuisine.
[54] A report of sushi being consumed in Britain occurred when the then Crown Prince Akihito (born 1933) visited Queen Elizabeth II at the time of her coronation in May 1953.
When David Bowie played in Auckland in 1983 as part of the Serious Moonlight Tour, it was rumoured his contract rider stated that sushi be on the menu, which at the time was rare and exotic in New Zealand,[65] and typically served only in high-end city restaurants.
[66] St Pierre's, a nationwide food franchise, officially began serving sushi in 1993,[67] after originally being established as a seafood delicatessen in Wellington in 1984.
