Hanaya Yohei and the Invention of Nigiri Sushi

Centuries before anyone in Edo pressed rice into a mound by hand, sushi meant waiting. At Lake Biwa, cooks packed nigorobuna carp in salt and rice and left it to lactic-acid ferment for one to three years, a dish called funazushi that people still eat today, though it remains an acquired, pungent taste. This method, narezushi, is believed to have reached Japan from Southeast Asia or coastal China back in the Yayoi period, and for centuries the rice was only a preserving agent, packed around the fish and then thrown away once its job was done. That began to change in the Muromachi era, between 1336 and 1573, when people started eating the fermented rice along with the fish instead of discarding it, a version called namanare. By the Edo period, which started in 1603, the fermentation itself was already being cut shorter, as vinegar started standing in for the slow work lactic acid used to do. Nobody invented this shift. It moved through fishing villages and market stalls the way techniques usually do, one cook borrowing from another. But it meant that by the early 1800s, sushi was already halfway to becoming a fast food, decades before anyone in Edo would finish the job. The old method never disappeared. Somewhere on the shore of Lake Biwa, a batch of carp was still sitting in its salt and rice, with a year or two left before anyone touched it.