How Sushi went popular in Italy: the role of producers and consumers.

Abstract

Expected results: I expect that the diffusion of sushi in Italy is caused not only by the adaptation of the original recipe to consumers taste, but also by the availability of different kinds of restaurants for different kinds of costumers which offer different kinds of the same cultural object with different prices. For cultural object, I mean “shared significance embodied in form” (Griswold, 2008: 12) The success of sushi is linked not only to the globalization of sushi chefs but also to the globalization of fish market which allows people to buy every kind of fish they need. From this analysis I expect to find differences which allow us to create a modern map of the “Japanisation of Europe” (Edstrom, 1994:36 Milligan, 2006: 5) and find out similarities and dissimilarities with the diffusion of sushi in Northern Europe (Cwiertka, 2000: 15-19). Then the widely spread consumption of sushi may suggest also a certain kind of fascination for Japanese cultural elements in Italy as proved for example by the popularity of manga and anime. I expect to find out that the wide spreading of sushi is not only linked to economic strategies adopted by chefs and restaurants’ manager, even if they have an important role, but also to the diffusion in Italy of other Japanese cultural elements such as manga and anime. I will describe how sushi spread in Italy through an analysis of the product, chefs, restaurants and consumers in particular, so to discover what kind of relationships link consumers, Japanese culture and the consumption of sushi.State of art: Scholars such as Bestor (2000) Cwiertka (2000) and Milligan (2006) already wrote about the diffusion of sushi in Northern America and Northern Europe. Bestor(2000) focused on the links between globalization of sushi and fish market while Cwiertka (2000) focused on the spread of sushi in Northern Europe analyzing the mediation of Great Britain in importing a product seen as an American Trend. Milligan (2006) wrote about the phenomenon of Japanization of Europe, by analyzing the spread of Japanese food in big European metropolitan areas. All this works were milestones to follow the spreading of Japanese cuisine in Europe, in particular sushi, but their focus was only on Northern Europe and big metropolitan areas. Methodology: I will focus on the history of sushi diffusion and how sushi moved from Japan to America and then to Europe. In this way I will try to find out the reasons which led sushi to be enjoyed in Italy. In chapter II, I will analyze sushi spreading from its birth in the IV century b.C to the end of the World War II(1945), as well as nowadays. The history of sushi diffusion in the world will be useful to identify the causes of its consumption in Italy too. In chapter III, by looking at Japanese restaurants, sushi bars, Italian and ethnic restaurants serving sushi and the new generation Wok Sushi, I will analyze the differences between them and how sushi is conceived by management. Since they are very different place, analyzing their commercial strategies and management, will lead us to identify the different ways those restaurants contributed to the diffusion of sushi in Italy. In chapter IV, I will focus on customers who play an important role in sushi diffusion in Italy because not only they eat it in sushi restaurants but also because their needs influence the strategies of restaurants themselves. In addition, the increasing of sushi consumers reveals a recent trend in Italy: the fascination for Japanese culture and Japanese products, in other words “the Japanisation” (Edstrom, 1994:36). This paper is based on digital bibliography, analysis of web-sites dedicated to sushi, direct interviews to four sushi chefs and a survey to a hundred sushi consumers in Italy. I have respected the privacy of my informants by omitting their names while I wrote time and places of the interviews and age, gender, occupation of interviewed.