Sukiyabashi Jiro

January 2007

In the summer of 2006 I was comissioned to photograph the coming together of three generations of sushi chefs -- connected to each other through the passing down of training but never before together in the same room.

Jiro-san, the oldest, is in his 80s and has been recognized as a living treasure by the Japanese government. His modest resturant (it's located next to a subway exit completely and utterly unassumingly in the basement of a office building), Sukiyabashi Jiro, is located in Ginza. Details about which can be found here (in Japanese). He serves Edomae style sushi. A lunch set of 20 pieces or so runs close to US$200.

See Also

- On Ginza
- On Sushi
- On Sukiyabashi Jiro (the resturant) (Japanese)

Details

The story goes something like: Jiro trained Shiro who ran off to Seattle, started one of the first sushi joints in the city, and trained Taiichi, who now runs his own Sushi shop. Jiro also trained his son, who works at Sukiyabashi Jiro and (one assumes) plans to take over the business once his octegenarian father retires (which, according to Jiro, is when he dies). The end result of a discussion between Jiro and his son and Taiichi and Shiro is two similar but culturally divided looks at the state of sushi and where it's heading. Throughout the 2 hour interview, there was a palpable tension between the traditionalists (Jiro and his son) and the American trained Taiichi and Americanized Shiro.

Aside from heated moments discussing nigiri preparation and training of sushi chefs, the discussion also veered into the effects of globalization and global warming on where fish is caught and how traditional seasonlity of certain species of fish is shifting.