Though salmon is now a staple in Japanese sushi culture, four decades ago, the fish was not used as an ingredient in the practice.
It took a group of Norwegians traveling to Tokyo in the mid-1980s to convince Japanese sushi chefs that the Scandinavian country’s high-quality raw salmon could complement their national dish, and from “Project Japan,” a global phenomenon was borne.
The Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the introduction of salmon into Japanese sushi, as well as the success of Project Japan, through a series of initiatives this year.
According to NSC estimates, around 30 percent of Norwegian salmon now ends up as sushi and/or is consumed raw. The marketing body has also conducted research of 20 sushi-consuming countries, finding that for 17 of these, salmon is the most preferred sushi topping. The council also said that its application in sushi has spearheaded the use of Norwegian salmon in other globally popular dishes like sashimi and poke.
“Few products have made Japanese cuisine so popular abroad as Norwegian salmon,” NSC Communications Director Martin Skaug told SeafoodSource. “The story of Norwegian salmon’s introduction to Japan is a great story in any diplomatic meeting or culinary collaboration. Norway is, this year, celebrating 120 years of diplomatic ties between Norway and Japan and 40 years of a perfect marriage between Japanese sushi and Norwegian salmon worldwide.”
In the 1980s, Project Japan recognized that demand for sushi was outweighing the East Asian nation’s domestic supply of tuna – Japan’s most popular sushi ingredient – and felt that this supply gap offered an opportunity for Norway’s farmed salmon. NSC acknowledges that while the initiative wasn’t immediately successful, with just 2 metric tons (MT) of Norwegian salmon exported to the country in 1980, within 20 years, it was a different story, with 45,000 MT of product heading to the market annually...
