Japan is surrounded by seas and the Japanese consume enormous amounts of seafood. Their diet has always depended heavily on seafood. Recently the world longevity charts indicate that the Japanese people hold a leading position. It appears that the high proportion of fish in their diet has resulted in healthy bodies.  Partly for this reason, Japanese cuisine is attracting growing interest from around the world. It’s a welcome proliferation.

There are many ways of cooking seafood. Among the various methods of preparation, the most popular way to serve fish is fresh-that is, raw. Serving raw fish is called sashimi. Raw fish is cut into various forms, (flat, cubed, threadlike and paper-thin), and that piece of fish is dipped into a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi (Japanese green horseradish) and eaten. Sashimi is a traditional course in any formal meal.

Sushi is vinegared rice garnished with an assortment of sliced raw fish or non-seafood. Sushi is a representative food of Japan. It has a culinary history in Japan dating back at least a thousand years. Sushi was originally a way to preserve fish. Seafood in brine naturally fermented and acted as a natural preserve. Later on, cooked rice was added to improve fermentation. Today a bite-size piece of the freshest raw fish pressed onto a ball of vinegared rice is known as “sushi”. This is the most common kind of “sushi”—there are variety of ways to prepare and serve sushi. During the course of its long history, every part of Japan developed its own delightful local sushi specials.

Two of the amazingly good tasting and visually beautiful sushi dishes you can easily make right in your kitchen from products you can buy at your supermarket or at a Chinese grocery.
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Sushi is pronounced “zushi” when suffixed to other words. For example nigiri-zushi, inari-zushi, non-maki-zushi and so on.

This book has been written to introduce this superb dish to those who would like to make sushi themselves at home. Some of the recipes for the various kinds of sushi are traditional and have retained their authenticity and some recipes are adapted to satisfy “modern tastes”. This makes sushi making simpler. The reader should feel free to forgo the raw fish and substitute other things. Also there is no need to adhere rigidly to the rules of Japanese cuisine. The most important thing is to enjoy a fascinating whole new sphere of cooking and entertaining.

Sushi is delicate in taste and aroma and is delightful to look at. Sushi-making is an intricate art.

Tokyo, Japan
October, 1983

Yukiko Moriyama