Sushi was invented to keep fish, not as a way to eat it raw. Its ancestor, narezushi, was fish packed in salt and cooked rice and left to ferment for months. When the fish was ready the rice was thrown away. The method most likely began among rice farmers in the river country of Southeast Asia and southern China, and it reached Japan by the eighth century. It then took roughly another thousand years to become nigiri, a slice of fish on a mouthful of vinegared rice, sold as fast food from street stalls in Edo, the city we now call Tokyo.
A barrel, a stone and a very long wait
Picture a wooden tub. Inside, layer upon layer, lie gutted, salted fish buried in cooked rice. A heavy stone presses down on the lid. Over the following months the rice ferments, much as cabbage does in sauerkraut, and the acid it produces keeps the fish from spoiling. By the end the rice has turned into a sour, pungent paste, and it goes in the bin. The fish, firm and tangy, is what you eat.
Historians broadly agree that the technique grew up where wet-rice farming met freshwater fish that arrived in seasonal gluts, most likely in the Mekong region and southern China. Chinese writers described fish preserved in fermented rice centuries before it is recorded in Japan, although Chinese cooking later largely abandoned it. The Japanese word sushi itself is generally thought to come from an old word meaning "sour".
You can still taste the ancestor. Around Lake Biwa, near Kyoto, cooks make funazushi from crucian carp fermented in rice, often for a year or more. Its flavour is often compared with a strong cheese, and it divides opinion to this day.
Learning to eat the rice
By the eighth century, sushi appears in Japanese records, including lists of goods paid to the court as tax. Over the following centuries, cooks began to shorten the wait. By around the Muromachi period, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, a style called namanare had appeared, in which the fish was only partly fermented and the rice was eaten too. This was the real turning point, because sushi stopped being preserved fish and became a dish of rice and fish together.
Vinegar speeds everything up
In the Edo period, from the seventeenth century, cooks found a shortcut. Instead of waiting for fermentation to sour the rice, they seasoned it with rice vinegar and made sushi in hours rather than months. This "fast sushi", hayazushi, came in many forms. Around Osaka, fish and rice were pressed into wooden boxes and cut into neat blocks, a style the region is still proud of. Its descendants include the mackerel Battera and Kaki-no-ha-zushi, sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves, a speciality of Nara.
Nigiri, the fast food of Edo
In the early nineteenth century Edo was one of the largest cities in the world, full of workers who wanted to eat quickly. Tradition credits a chef called Hanaya Yohei, working in the 1820s, with pressing a slice of fish onto a hand-formed ball of vinegared rice and serving it at once. He may not have been the only one doing it, but nigiri caught on quickly. It was sold from stalls, eaten standing up and with the fingers, and the pieces were larger than today's, closer to a mouthful and a half.
The style took the name Edomae, "in front of Edo", after the bay that supplied its fish. With no refrigeration, every fish needed a treatment. Gizzard shad was salted and cured in vinegar. Tuna was marinated in soy sauce. Conger eel was simmered and brushed with a sweet, sticky glaze, and prawns were boiled. That is why a classic sushi counter still serves Kohada Nigiri, Zuke Maguro Nigiri and Anago Nigiri: they are the Edo pantry, preserved on rice. Even the fatty tuna belly now prized as toro was long looked down upon, and it only became a luxury in the twentieth century.
An earthquake, the fridge and a conveyor belt
The Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 devastated Tokyo, and it is often credited with scattering Edo-trained sushi chefs across Japan, taking nigiri with them. After the Second World War, refrigeration made raw fish practical far from the coast, and nigiri became a national dish rather than a Tokyo one. In 1958 a restaurateur in Osaka, Yoshiaki Shiraishi, opened the first conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. He is said to have been inspired by the conveyors of a beer bottling plant. Sushi was on its way to becoming everyday food.
Sushi goes west
Sushi bars opened in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and there the rules began to bend. The California roll, made with crab and avocado and with the rice on the outside, is often credited to Ichiro Mashita at the Tokyo Kaikan restaurant in Little Tokyo. The Vancouver chef Hidekazu Tojo also claims an early version, and the truth probably involves more than one cook. The usual explanation for the inside-out roll is that it hid the unfamiliar seaweed from new diners. From there sushi went everywhere, from supermarket fridges to tasting counters that seat eight.
Making sushi at home today
History offers a useful lesson for the home cook. The Edo masters worked without fridges, so their toppings were often cured, marinated or cooked, and those are still the easiest and safest place to start.
- Get the rice right first. It is the heart of sushi. Our guide to making sushi rice at home covers washing, cooking and seasoning.
- Start with Edo's own toppings: soy-marinated tuna, vinegar-cured mackerel, cooked prawns and sweet omelette.
- Buy raw fish with care. Read how to buy fish for sushi before you serve anything raw.
- Learn the shapes. Our beginner's guide to nigiri, maki and temaki takes you through each one.
The Art of Sushi follows the whole story on the plate, from the pressed Battera of Osaka to classic Kohada Nigiri, Edomae Chirashi and the California Roll that took sushi abroad.
Questions people ask
Where did sushi originate?
The idea of preserving fish in fermented rice most likely began in Southeast Asia and southern China, then reached Japan by the eighth century. Nigiri, the sushi most people picture today, is Japanese and dates from early nineteenth-century Edo, now Tokyo.
Was sushi originally raw fish?
No. The earliest sushi was fermented fish, and the rice was discarded. Even the first nigiri often used fish that had been cured, marinated or cooked. Sushi made with very fresh raw fish became widespread only with modern refrigeration.
Who invented nigiri sushi?
Tradition names Hanaya Yohei, a chef in Edo in the 1820s. He is the name the story settled on, though other stall-keepers were probably making something similar at the same time.
What is the difference between sushi and sashimi?
Sushi always involves vinegared rice, with or without fish. Sashimi is sliced raw fish or seafood served on its own, without rice.