WSJ: A Master's Touch
...Being served by a sushi master is the ultimate bespoke food experience in Japan. But the practice is on the wane, undermined by a proliferation of sushi-chain restaurants -- including casual eateries where dishes are delivered on a conveyor belt -- that are pushing smaller restaurants, often family-owned, out of business. What's more, a growing reluctance among young Japanese to undergo the nearly 10 years of required training threatens the future supply of sushi masters. Most sushi chefs are men; women rarely enter the field partly because of the physical labor involved in procuring supplies from the fish market and partly because of a cultural stigma. According to the national union of sushi chefs in Japan, the number of chefs has dropped in step with the number of registered sushi restaurants in the country, which has fallen to 9,000 as of November 2009 from 10,000 in 2006. In 1992, there were 20,000. Today's aspiring sushi chefs "want to skip the hard part and start making sushi pieces right away. But it doesn't work that way, because a sushi chef is not just a chef," says Tadashi Yamagata, 61, the fourth-generation owner of Miyakozushi restaurant in Tokyo's Nihonbashi area, who also heads Japan's sushi-chef union...Ironically, the more popular sushi has grown, the less popular the profession has become. "Sadly, I don't think many kids today know the difference in taste between mass-produced sushi and sushi served at traditional sushi restaurants," says Mr. Hibino, the food culture professor...more...
