Sushi’s Extraordinary Evolution: From Pickle to Primetime

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Sushi is everywhere these days—in grocery stores and gas stations, at buffets and birthday parties, in Europe and Latin America and all over the United States. This popularity is especially astonishing when you remember that, just a few decades ago, the idea of eating nuggets of raw fish and rice seemed bizarre, intimidating, and even a little gross to most non-Japanese people. Even more surprising? The simple nigiri and maki rolls we think of as “traditional” sushi are relatively recent inventions, too. This episode, we’re going back to sushi’s origins as a cheesy-tasting fermented fish pickle, to tell the story of how impatience, war, and the 1980s—the glory days of yuppies, Sony Walkmans, and The Breakfast Club—transformed it into the seafood snack we know and love today. Plus listen in now to hear why you're eating sushi all wrong—and what you're missing out on as a result.

"Bowl of Sushi" by the artist Hiroshige, painted in the 1830s or 40s, during the period when Edo-style sushi emerged.

Episode Notes

Eric Rath

A professor at the University of Kansas, Eric studies the history of premodern Japan. He is the author of Oishii: The History of Sushi. His most recent book is Kanpai: The History of Sake.

Trevor Corson

Trevor Corson is a journalist and professor at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice. You can also hear him as a guest on our lobster episode.

Left, an 1810 wood block by Ryūryūkyo Shinsai of New Year's sushi and sake, featuring poems in the center about shrimp sushi (ebi no sushi) and sushi rice wrapped in bamboo leaves (sasamaki); right, a child begs for nigiri in an 1844 woodblock by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. (Image credits: left, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art; right, Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library)
Sushi showing up in travel advertisements for Japan Airlines in 1973 (left) and Northwest Air in 1980 (right), during the time when Japan's economy was booming and Americans became curious about its culture and food.

Nancy Matsumoto

Nancy Matsumoto is a freelance food writer, editor and author. Her latest book is Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics

This episode of Gastropod was supported by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics. Check out the other books, movies, shows, podcasts, and more that they support here.

Transcript

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