Sushi and the global economy

Sasha Issenberg provides a fish's-eye view of tuna's path from the sea to your dinner plate

By Bina Venkataraman

from the July 24, 2007 edition

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Stories of how food makes it to your dinner table tend to be less than appetizing in this age of free trade and free-range chicken. From "Fast Food Nation" to "The Omnivore's Dilemma," learning about what we eat titillates the mind more often than the tongue. If this can be called a trend, Sasha Issenberg's The Sushi Economy is a notable exception: During the 2-1/2 weeks I spent reading it, I ate sushi six times.

Issenberg traces the rising tsunami that is the sushi trade from tuna fisheries where prize bluefin are caught, to sushi stalls on the Tokyo streets to high-fashion American restaurants. To him sushi is an exceptional manifestation of today's global economy: cross-cultural, unbranded, and with a link to the environment so fresh that it quivers. But even more distinctive, he notes, is the engine that drives this booming economy: personal tastes instead of corporate plans.

"In the sushi economy, power does not flow downward from the boardrooms of multinational corporations, and culture does not radiate outward from decisions made in Hollywood studios, New York newsrooms, or London agencies," writes Issenberg. "Instead the agents of change have been individuals who have – largely through personal migrations, both temporary and permanent – created unlikely linkages across hemispheres in an era of new mobility."

To show the path of the raw fish as it journeys across global tides, Issenberg focuses his lens on a cast of intriguing characters: a vigilante who seeks out tuna-fishing pirates on the Mediterranean, a second-generation auctioneer in the Tsukiji fish market, and world-famous sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa who, after moving to the US, pioneered a new wave of innovative sushi creations.

Entrepreneurs play their part, too, such as the savvy shipping merchant who figured out how to freeze-package a fish so it can survive an overnight flight or the Texas chef who taught himself to speak Japanese by apprenticing in sushi restaurants and watching anime for years.

Fresh fish and the global market

"The Sushi Economy" not only documents the fascinating evolution of the global taste for sushi and the trade that made it possible, it also dives fearlessly into intersecting topics such as the development of US-Japanese trade relations, internment, the exportation of American fast-food culture, and the assimilation of foreign foods in the US market.

While tracing these parallel histories, Issenberg loads a reader's plate with sushi trade subcultures, from an annual tuna toss in Australia to the hierarchical, near-misogynic culture of modern sushi chefs.

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