The Sushi Roundtable: A Discussion with Jiro Ono, Part 2

Photograph by Craig Mod

Jiro Ono, proprietor of the famous Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi restaurant in Ginza, and his son served a mouth-watering array of sushi to us on a rainy spring day in Tokyo. Although I mentioned the menu in part 1 of this interview, it is worth repeating:

Jiro started us off with karei (flounder), followed in rapid succession by sumi ika (squid), inada (baby yellowtail), maguro, chutoro, toro, kohada (marinated shad), awabi (abalone), katsuo (seared bonito) and sayori (saury fish).

Everything was good, but the squid was exquisite. Next he served kuruma ebi (boiled prawn), aji (spanish mackeral), iwashi (sardine), kobashira (yellow clam scallop), akagai (red clam) and a particularly tasty cut of anago (braised sea eel). The next piece was the one Jiro was most proud of: uni (sea urchin). To be frank, I think Shiro and I serve better sea urchin in Seattle all the time. But, of course, the lunch was delicious and memorable. Jiro finished the meal with ikura, shako (sand shrimp) and tamago.

After that feast, which left sushi chef Shiro Kashiba in a cold sweat, we began our roundtable. In part 1, Jiro talked about what it takes to be a good sushi chef (“You have to be always experimenting, always pursuing.”), motivation, stress and the hard road to success (“Guys who come straight out of school don’t last. But the other kinds of guys — the ones who have worked as lowly scrubs somewhere else for years — they may last because they’re also thinking, ‘If I don’t really hunker down and take this seriously, I’m going to end up jobless.’”)

In the second part of our conversation, which stretched on for hours on a rainy spring day, we turned the conversation toward climate change and how it affects sushi. While Jiro, Shiro Kashiba (the other sushi chef present) and I have different opinions about a lot of things in the world of sushi, we all agreed that climate change was having a negative effect on the supply of fresh fish.

Kitamura: How is climate-change affecting fish? I know that kohada used to be available in April, but now you can get it in January …

Jiro Ono: This is not just happening in Tokyo; it’s happening all over the world. Our occupation draws on the changes of the four seasons. Now, it’s a mess. Some fish don’t come out, others do at funny times … We alone cannot do anything about this — it’s a global phenomenon. My book Shunka Shuto (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) will become obsolete! This is a very serious problem. It’s not something that will fix itself in a year or two. They call it global warming, but the root cause of it is humans — we’ve created this problem over the years.

Sayori (halfbeaks) are available now (May), but they are traditionally fish that taper off at the end of January to early February. Right now, katsuo (skipjack) and aji (horse mackerel) should be in season. Halfbeaks should not be available now. The taste itself is not bad, however.

Kitamura: Is there fish that you can no longer serve because the taste has deteriorated?

Jiro Ono: Shako (mantis shrimp) should be large, but now they’re much smaller. We’ve noticed strange changes since, what, three to five years ago? Skipjack tuna is normally available from around mid-April through the end of June. But last year, we were using them from around July through November. We couldn’t use them in April, May or June. If this were years ago, skipjack available in November would’ve been tuna of the worst kind. That’s how much things have changed.

There are 10, 20, 30 types of toppings available for sushi. That means if one is not available, you can use another. Sushi itself will not deteriorate, but the toppings will change. The worst-case scenario is what tasted great 10 years ago may not taste so great anymore. That’s a possibility, but also a hard one to pin down. Taste buds adapt quickly. Even if someone says, “This fish tasted great 10 years ago” that’s just an opinion because you can’t compare the fish anymore. Besides, over a 10-year period, our taste buds will have adapted to the lesser flavor, and we will be unable to detect much of a difference. The change doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over a long period of time, and humans will get used to it. So sushi itself is not going to deteriorate.

Kitamura: That said, the effects of climate change are still serious, aren’t they?

Jiro Ono: Yes. We’re in the midst of dramatic changes. The tuna problem is unbelievable. There are no good tuna out there no matter how hard you look.

You may have heard of the tuna of Ohma — they’ve become quite famous. But let’s say we have 300 of them. I can only use maybe one. They are tuna that can be caught off the coast of Tsugaru Peninsula in Aomori Prefecture. It is now considered the best place to catch the best tuna. Years ago, if you caught 300, most would’ve been usable.

Tuna is by far the most worrisome of all problems; you can’t run a sushi business without tuna.

There probably won’t ever be a time when there’s completely no tuna around Japan. If there’s absolutely no tuna available in Japan, then maybe we’ll have to consider using frozen imports. There will be a noticeable difference in quality. But if it’s gradual, the customer won’t be able to tell the difference. That, to me, is a little sad — that people won’t be able to taste the great tuna of yore. Same goes for halibut. The best kind is the blue-eyed halibut, but you can’t find those anymore. I don’t know if they’ve disappeared or what … but their availability has dropped by less than half. It’s not about price anymore; it’s about availability. If it’s available, I don’t care how much it costs — I want it. That’s the situation.

Kitamura: How much is the cost affected by lack of availability?

Jiro Ono: Our cost to prepare one slice of tuna — the most delicious fatty part — is 8,500 yen (about $75). That’s the base price without rice or anything else, just the sliced tuna. (For fatty tuna) you can only use two or so slices in the best section of the belly. We had a 12 million yen ($100,000) tuna — not the belly part but the shoulder. That was about a…300,000 yen ($25,000) deficit for us. So, we can’t run the business on tuna alone. That would bankrupt us. If we buy a 10-kilogram tuna and prepared sushi with it, it would be a 300,000-yen deficit.

Tuna prices have traditionally gone through predictable seasonal fluctuations throughout the year. It’s cheaper during one season, and more expensive in others, but in the end, the prices even out. Nowadays, there’s no such thing as winter or summer for certain types of fish. You can’t find good tuna belly either, just shoulder. So expensive doesn’t necessarily translate into quality. The truth is, tuna was never a profitable topping.

Take kohada as an example. That used to be so inexpensive. Today, they cost about 50,000 yen ($450) a kilogram. You can get about 100 slices out of that, but that’s 500 yen a slice! And since you don’t offer one slice, but two, that’s 1,000 yen for two slices of kohada. Now who would pay 1,000 yen for a serving of kohada?

Kitamura: So why not find some other new material to top the fish? Because of sushi chef pride?

Jiro Ono: No. Because they don’t taste good. Of course, everybody’s thinking about that. And they’re coming out with new stuff. But they fade out quickly. You need quality for lasting impact. Remember radish sprouts? They were in everything years ago. Sprout rolls were everywhere. They swept the nation. There were even times when the grocery stores ran out of them. Today, you don’t see them anywhere. Not a trace. They were never that great to begin with. Just a fad.

Kashiba: Here in Seattle, 20 years behind in sushi, we’re still using them! (laughs)

Soon after that, we said our goodbyes and Shiro and I went back out onto the Ginza, shining with rain, for a final stroll before I caught a bullet train to Kyoto to see my family. It was a once in a lifetime experience to meet Jiro Ono, the teacher of my teacher, and it inspired me because I realized that despite all the tradition and culture that connects sushi to Japan, it has become a global cuisine; the future of sushi will be shaped by skilled chefs from Seattle and Boston and Bangkok as well as Tokyo and Kyoto. I look forward to contributing to that future.

The interview was translated from the Japanese by Yuko Enomoto.