Japanese Food Known as \'Sushi\'

¶ … Japanese food known as 'sushi' was virtually unknown in America. As awareness of the cuisine spread, eating sushi became the punch line of jokes about eating 'raw fish.' Then eating sushi became a kind of exotic cultural status, evidence of an elite individual's urbanity or embrace of the unusual and international. Now, the fact that platters of sushi are available even in supermarkets in the Midwest, according to a newspaper review in the Village Voice of the book the Sushi Economy by Sasha Issenberg, is commonly seen as evidence of America's cultural diversity and pluralism. Consumption of foodstuffs of other nation's products, and consuming them in the right, culturally appropriate fashion has become synonymous with cultural as well as economic globalization. Recall how everyday Russian's ability to eat McDonald's in the 1990s during the age of glasnost was seen as a triumph of capitalism and the new tolerance. KFC today is one of the most popular franchises in China, as it melds the Chinese traditional love of oily, fried food with an icon of Americana, Cornel Sanders.

The embrace of another nation's commodities does not necessarily mean greater tolerance of that nation's culture and people, and create real cultural change, although it can produce this as a kind of byproduct. It can be a symptom of an influx of new immigration and new ideas. The effects of cultural diversity in terms of the Sushi Economy, according to the author of the book, have not always been democratic. Some people in America pride themselves as being more 'in the know' of the different ways and byways of demonstrating one's fluency in this culture, depending on their sushi preferences. It is not enough merely to wield a pair of chopsticks with deftness. According to the author of the review, Nina Lalli: "You aren't being paranoid -- your sushi chef is judging you. If you sit at the bar and order California rolls and then a piece of salmon, you're likely to receive the sorriest, leanest piece of tail meat in the house" (Lalli 2007). In contrast, the other hand, "an outsider who can prove himself a connoisseur, will be rewarded with the most buttery bites" (Lalli, 2007).

Our level of culture and class as Americans, not merely our tolerance and embrace of cultural diversity, is often graded by what we consume, and how we consume different products. Is merely being able to buy different products a marker of good taste, or merely greater buying power? The capitalist, American media often suggests that cultural tolerance and sporting the attributes of another culture is the same, but the presence of sushi in supermarkets may have more to do with marketing than real evidence of an improvement in Japanese-American relations, notes the Sushi Economy. Does the fact we willingly use Toyotas and eat sushi make us more tolerant, or even reveal that we have grown more diverse and more open as a society, or merely the fact these objects may be cheaper than American domestic goods in the case of cars, or have cultural cache in the case of sushi?

One anecdote noted by the author Issenberg is his encounter "with a white sushi chef named Tyson Cole who fell into the business as a dishwasher/in-debt college student" (Lalli, 2007). Such a melding of cultures, of Southern-American and Japanese-American would be unthinkable back in the 1940s, when Japanese-Americans were not regarded as Americans at all, as exemplified in the openly hostile policies of the American government during World War II. Also, the Japanese sushi masters of the past would not trust such a non-Japanese individual. Both the book and the review use the whiteness of Cole as kind of 'exoticism' in and of itself. Cole's Texan origins, and his mundane background, fused with his ability to prepare exotic sushi becomes a kind of symbol of the new face of America. But the book also notes that sushi came to America, not because of Japanese-American's appetite for the foodstuff in America, but because of purveyors' attempts to get rid of a type of fish despised by the Japanese as too oily, tuna. The fish was first sold as sushi in America, rolled up along with other types of fish that came from "the hundreds of pounds of meat left over after the [real, traditional Japanese] sushi [cuts] had been carved away" which gradually whetted the appetite of both the Japanese and the Americans for new and untraditional forms of sushi (Lalli, 2007).

The adaptation of a Japanese cuisine in America, and the altering of Japanese and American tastes for different types of sushi products becomes a test case of cultural diversity, the article suggests. The article suggests that every easy example of diversity is actually the product of economics, of the American class system of the culture of America and the nation of the product's origin. The article does show that what might easily be seen as an example of tolerance and diversity, namely the availability and love of an 'other' culture's food, does not always mean that greater cultural understanding has been achieved, although it suggests that a love of another culture's cuisine can lead to a love of that culture. This is demonstrated by the Caucasian sushi chef opening himself up to a new culture, first out of curiosity than out of deference and respect.