Letter from Tokyo

Without America's freewheeling approach, we wouldn't be enjoying California rolls nor Nobu's Peruvian/Japanese artistry. But how far is too far when deviating from authenticity? And who's to judge? Akiko Katayama reports on Japan's efforts to keep things in check.

Posted: February 20, 2009

The United States has approximately 9,000 Japanese restaurants, but just how authentic is the food they serve?

Last year the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries of Japan came up with the idea that Japanese restaurants abroad should be rated based on authenticity. If a restaurant was "authentic" enough, it would be awarded an "approved" status by the government and allowed to place a sign at the door as an authorized restaurant. The idea of sending out "sushi police" was quickly dismissed by Japanese and non-Japanese alike, saying it ignored how Japanese cuisine had uniquely evolved outside Japan.

So, no, Nobu, don't worry. No policeman is going to come pounding on your door with a nightstick. However, the initial idea of an approval system is not completely unreasonable. Approximately 80 percent of the Japanese restaurants in the United States are owned by non-Japanese, according to JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Quite a few of them serve dishes that look Japanese but omit essential components, such as dashi in miso soup. That's the equivalent of no salt in the pasta water.

And that type of situation can be easily addressed. Even though the sushi police proposal didn't see the light, MAFF budgeted $2.7 million last year to found an organization called JRO (Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad) to promote export of Japanese ingredients to foreign countries by supporting Japanese restaurants abroad, as "they serve as 'showrooms' for communicating Japanese food and culture to the world."

Implicit in this line of reasoning is that if the showrooms don't offer a great dining experience, the image of Japanese cuisine will slip and exports of Japanese ingredients will stall. Hence, the importance of maintaining high standards in Japanese restaurants abroad.

So far, JRO has opened branches in London, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and Taipei to achieve their goals. A New York City office is expected to open this year.

Turning up the heat in March, JRO held a two day Japanese Restaurant International Forum in Tokyo to discuss the status of Japanese cuisine overseas and how it should evolve. Invited were representatives of food related businesses from major cities around the world where Japanese cuisine is popular, such as New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, and Bangkok. Among the participants were David Bouley of Bouley in New York City and Yoshi Tome, owner of Sushi Ran in Sausalito, California. The total number of the participants reached 700, including 20 journalists and 110 chefs, restaurateurs, and food distributors from 15 foreign countries.

As the program unfolded, some dominant issues emerged. "Culture" was one of them. Indeed, it was the word most frequently heard. Culture is an integral part of Japanese cuisine for anyone involved in Japanese food related businesses. As panelist Ryuji Ishii, president of AFC Corporation, whose 2,500 stores represent the largest take-home sushi chain in the United States and Canada, explained: "To me, sushi is an art form. Appreciation of aesthetics in food, such as colors of raw fish and perfectly shaped sushi rice, stems from the unique cultural mindset of Japan. I would like our American customers to understand the culture, since it's an important part of eating Japanese food."

Bouley, another panelist, who has been using Japanese ingredients since the 1980s, described how a Japanese fisherman caught fish and processed it employing a technique called ikejime that allows the catch to stay much fresher than usual on a fishing trip. "From the sea to the table, the entire food distribution system in Japan treats ingredients with tremendous care and respect. This is one thing we should learn from Japanese culture."

Recognizing that the cultural aspects of a specific cuisine may be dauntingly difficult and time-consuming for foreigners to understand, and since food can be enjoyed without the knowledge of its culture and social context in its home country, JRO hopes to advance cultural understanding by coordinating exchange programs between culinary schools in Japan and overseas.

More important than cultural niceties, however, is food safety, already an issue among Japanese chefs in the United States. Sotohiro Kosugi, chef/owner of Soto in New York City, issued a warning: "No one has died from eating sushi in the centuries of sushi-making history, because sushi chefs in Japan know how to handle raw fish properly. But most sushi chefs in the U.S. do not know, for instance, what types of bacteria grow to what degree at what temperature. If sushi chefs here remain untrained, I'm afraid that one day in the U.S. some serious health hazard will occur from mishandled raw fish."

Panelists at the forum expressed the same concern. "People look at cooking skills as the most important aspect of the sushi business, but what equally matters is how to judge freshness of fish," says Ishii.

The issue is a little more complex than keeping raw fish fresh. Studies scientifically proved that vinegar used for sushi rice has strong antibacterial characteristics. But in New York, for instance, health officials don't take this into consideration, decreeing that sushi rice, as a potentially hazardous food, must be kept below 45°F or above 140°F, way too high to preserve the flavor of delicate raw fish, such as fatty tuna, whitefish, and sea urchin.

"In San Francisco," according to Tome, "it used to be that sushi rice had to be kept at a much higher temperature than the Japanese criteria. Now it's OK to keep sushi rice at room temperature up to four hours if it's cooked with enough vinegar. But we had to suffer from a lengthy, difficult negotiation with the health authority to change the original U.S. criteria."

Also, wearing gloves to make sushi, a taboo for sushi chefs in Japan, is mandatory in New York. Naomichi Yasuda of Sushi Yasuda in New York City says, "Instead of wearing gloves, sushi chefs in Japan constantly wash their hands so the flavor of one fish does not transfer to another. I'd imagine their hands are much cleaner than the gloves worn by those who don't know how to treat raw fish professionally."

JRO would need to work with U.S. health officials so that the U.S. standards won't be applied blindly to Japanese cuisine. Also, they would need to come up with a specific training program for sushi chefs in the U.S. In the meantime, JRO has already collaborated with Zagat Survey to produce the recently released America's Top Japanese Restaurants, which also includes information about Japanese food and techniques.

In the United States, a serious shortage of Japanese chefs, says Tome, is another issue. "Especially after 9/11, visas are so hard to obtain for Japanese chefs who want to work here. The chefs who were already in the U.S. are now getting older, and their pay is higher. I would like JRO to negotiate with the U.S. government for, say, 100 visas for skillful chefs from Japan. Also, it's important to build culinary schools in the U.S. to teach Americans how to cook Japanese cuisine."

While bringing chefs from Japan is one solution, foreign chefs are also invited to Japan. At the forum, Yukio Hattori, president of the reputable culinary school Hattori Nutrition College in Tokyo, talked about his exchange program. "I would like to invite chefs from abroad to my school, where currently the most popular class is Italian, followed by French. Not many Japanese students want to study Japanese cuisine any more, probably because of its depth and the time it takes to master. I would like ambitious foreign chefs to come to my school and learn the essence of Japanese cuisine and develop their own style back home. Ferran Adrià visited my school several times, and now he uses various Japanese ingredients such as kuzu starch, yuzu, and agar-agar. His ways of using them are very different from the classic Japanese ways, but that is fine. Japanese chefs may be even inspired by non-Japanese chefs' new approach to Japanese ingredients."

Another panelist, Masahiro Kurisu, the third generation chef/owner of Tankuma in Kyoto, was equally open-minded. "As a traditional kaiseki chef, my mission is to preserve the essence of Japanese cuisine as purely as possible, such as technical perfection, strong emphasis on seasonality, and hospitality. But when I visited New York last year, I was fascinated by the openness of Americans to new things and the energy with which they absorb what they find valuable. I would rather let them decide what to do with the essence of Japanese cuisine in their local context."

In that case then, what about JRO, whose parent organization once advocated the approval system? According to Kazuo Ogura, director of The Japan Foundation and an advisor to JRO, "We believe that the tradition of Japanese cuisine should be preserved, but it should not be 'owned' by the Japanese. It should be shared by everybody in the world. That is, shared by eating it and by developing it together."

There were over 24,000 Japanese restaurants outside Japan in 2005, and by 2009 the number is expected to double. Hopefully JRO will help them to prosper without getting lost in translation.

Akiko Katayama is a food writer based in New York. She is also a judge on Iron Chef America on Food Network.