Back to the future for Japan

Tradition meets status symbol

Traditional Japanese cuisine is renowned for its simplicity, use of seasonal ingredients and focus on presentation. The most famous Japanese foods-sushi and sashimi-are now more than food, they are status symbols. Because sushi and sashimi are also seen as healthy, there is an increasing demand for cheaper, simpler sushi as a healthy fast food. Chains like Yo! Sushi and Sushi Shop are growing rapidly in markets throughout Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. As a consequence of these two trends the number of sushi restaurants outside Japan has been soaring.

The image of Japanese chefs as wedded to traditional styles of cooking is also changing, led initially by celebrity chefs who work outside Japan. Internationally renowned chefs such as Masaharu Morimoto, Nobu Matsuhisha and Tetsuya Wakuda combine Japanese styles of presentation and flavor palettes with global ingredients and cooking methods to produce a broader, deeper style of cooking.

The wildly popular Japanese reality cooking show Iron Chef has also been introducing Japanese diners to European influences. And while traditionally prepared foods remain popular, Japanese chefs and entrepreneurs are open to innovation. Aburi sushi, sushi that has been seared with a blowtorch to bring out the fatty flavours of the fish, is one innovation that is catching on with traditionalists.

Other innovations are more fanciful. The popular Maimodo Burger, in Tokyo, serves fast foods made entirely out of sweets. Hamburgers are made of a pastry cream “patty”, kiwi “pickles” and a sponge cake “bun”; french fries are deep-fried custard cream. The take away is especially popular with men who don’t want to be seen eating cakes in public.

The sushi police

These modernizing trends have not gone unnoticed by the Japanese government. Many traditionalists express alarm at the growing incidence of “pseudo-sushi” such as miso cappuccino and Philadelphia rolls (cream cheese and smoked salmon), and bemoan the fact that the California roll (crab and avocado), an American import, is now one of the most popular types of maki sushi in Japan.

While the number of Japanese restaurants outside Japan is expected to increase to 50,000 by 2010, many of these restaurants are not actually Japanese owned. For example, in Paris, 90 percent of Japanese restaurants are owned by Chinese. These figures are causing some people in Japan to worry that their traditional cuisine is being degraded.

Responding to these concerns, the agriculture ministry announced plans last autumn for the Japanese Restaurant Recommendation Program, which would award “pure Japanese” restaurants with the official Japanese government seals of approval.

In its report, the Ministry said, “Although the menu and other aspects vary from restaurant to restaurant, there are some that operate under the guise of a Japanese restaurant just because of the upmarket image that is associated with Japanese foods.”

Dubbed “sushi police” the plan was met with a barrage of criticism, especially among Japanese chefs in the US. The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry’s advisory panel, set up to discuss the details of the recommendation program, eventually ditched the proposed official certification plan for overseas Japanese restaurants in March, although it kept the program itself alive.

In the Middle East, word of the initiative raised little outcry among chefs. Most of the people eating Japanese food in the UAE expect to eat traditional foods. According to Chef Masamitsu (Masa) Morino, Japanese Chef, Tokyo@thetowers and ET Sushi, Jumeirah Emirates Towers, “Although there are occasions where it can be to the diner’s advantage for us to create something a little different and unique, these do not often prove as popular as the traditional cooking methods.

Expanding eastwards

For most Japanese the abiding trend is that food is getting faster. Foreign fast food brands such as McDonald’s and Starbucks are doing very well in Japan, but home-grown fast food chains are also gaining in popularity.

Smaller, mom and pop, traditional restaurants are responding to the competition by modernising. Noodle stands, once the preserve of corporate foot soldiers on a brief break, students and blue collar workers, have brightened up their décor and added healthy options to appeal to working women and white collar workers.

Many Japanese fast-food retailers are responding to increasing competition at home by looking towards Asia for expansion possibilities. Yoshinoya, a Japanese chain of restaurants specializing in gyudon (rice toped with beef and onion) now has 70 outlets in Beijing. Hachiban, specializing in ramen noodles, has more than 50 branches in Thailand and has recently expanded its presence to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai and Malaysia.

Monteroza, Inc, one of Japan’s largest operators of traditional pubs, called izakaya, has also begun expanding into China while Monteroza’s main rival, Wara Wara is also making its move into China and Taiwan.
And while Starbucks now owns more than 600 branches in Japan, UniCafé Inc., a Japanese coffee producer, has recently established a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corp. and plans to create a franchise network with 100 coffee shops in China by 2010.

Horse sushi anyone?

But the picture is not all rosy.

One worrying trend for the Japanese catering industry is the increasing shortages of some types of fish. While restaurants outside Japan have little trouble sourcing high-quality ingredients, inside Japan, where the volume of fish eaten is huge, it is a different matter.

Broiled eel is a summer favorite dish in Japan. But following a decision by the European Union to slash eel exports, Japanese consumers are facing a shortage of eel this summer. Japanese waters provide about 20% of the 100,000 tons consumed annually, but catches have declined dramatically-to around 1 percent of 1970 levels. European eel stocks have also decreased to the point where the European Union is considering a permanent restriction in the eel trade.

Bluefin tuna, the king of Japanese fish, is also facing severe shortages. Last year, dozens of nations agreed to reduce annual tuna catches in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean by 20 percent in an attempt to stabilise fast-declining fish populations brought on by decade of overfishing. At the same time, world-wide demand for top-grade sushi has shot up. Experts say the shortages will only become more severe as populations of the slow-growing bluefin will fail to keep up with demand.

In the last year, the average price of imported bluefin in Japan has risen by more than a third. The Japanese consume three-quarters of the world’s annual tuna catch and shortages are even having an effect on national self-esteem. The shortages have also led Japan’s chefs to get a bit, well, creative with red coloured substitutes such as horse meat and roe deer.

Japanese fisheries research centres, heavily subsidised by local governments, have spent millions of dollars on advanced breeding programs for bluefin. Begun in 1970, the tuna in the program bore eggs for the first time in 2006, but commercial production is still several years away. Many Japanese conservationists are now saying that it is time for the Japanese people to heed the new realities of ecosystem degradation and begin changing their eating habits to focus more on foods that are not in danger.

This will not be easy, however.

The Japanese are fiercely proud of their food traditions, and Japan is the world’s largest net food importer. The government subsidises an uncompetitive domestic food production industry with some of the world’s highest import tariffs (including a whopping 778% rice tariff).

The growing popularity of Japanese foods worldwide has stimulated the government into launching a major food-export drive, but given the cost of traditional Japanese agricultural exports, such as rice, Japanese food and food products will continue to be high-end for a long time to come.