It is 1982. And word in the United States is  that the Japanese have made a sushi robot.

The newspaper headlines had a blast. "You can  have sushi robot for a mere $1.6 million yen"

Or "Japanese shops resist tide of automation"

Or "Sushi shop owners at sea over robot in Japan".

And when the machine first obtained  export clearance to the US,  

we got the gem "Sushi Robot  invasion slices into West Coast".

My initial impression of the first Sushi Robot was  

that it did something with the  fish. Cutting it or something.

I was wrong. The first Sushi Robot was a  rice machine. In today's video, we go back  

yet again to my favorite carb. And discuss the  machine that industrialized the art of sushi.

## Beginnings

Where does sushi come from? Well,  let me start you off with a story.

Imagine the river regions of Southeast  Asia in Myanmar and Northeast Thailand,  

where rice paddy cultivation first emerged.  They grew rice in flooded paddies. Freshwater  

fish like carp soon found their way into  the paddies during the monsoon floods.

And then soon enough, rice paddy farmers were  

cultivating and catching the fish for  food. The broad understanding is that  

early forms of sushi began as a way to  preserve fish meat in the humid heat.

The process is simple. Take a gutted  and cleaned piece of fish or shellfish.

Salt it and then pack cooked rice around it.

Then press the whole culinary concoction  under a rock for maybe 2 months or longer.

After time, the rice produces a sour lactic  

acid that permeates through  and preserves the fish meat.

We call this Nare-zushi, which means  "matured" or "fermented" sushi. Han Chinese  

visitors visiting Southeast Asia  picked it up and through them,  

it eventually made its way to Japan. It  was likely established by the year 718 AD,  

when it or something like it was mentioned  in a Japanese government tax document.

A variant called funa-zushi is still  eaten today. Though it is not quite as  

popular because its sour taste and rather weird  look does not quite appeal to modern palates.

This is all a nice clean story and most  commonly cited as sushi's origin story.  

But the fact is that nobody really knows. We have  

no archaeological evidence. Just  ancient writings and guesswork.

This is feeble evidence indeed. We  have issues just tracking down how  

sushi came to the United States  less than a hundred years ago,  

and who invented the California Roll.  Going back 1,000 years? Not a chance.

Japanese scholars chose this particular  explanation because they presumed that  

sushi's ancestors needed both rice and fish,  and looked for ancient societies with both.

Regardless. Most people seem to agree that sushi  as we know it today began in Japan as a method of  

fermenting and/or preserving fish. If not with  rice, then with something else like millet.

## The Evolution of Sushi

So how did Nare-zushi become the  sushi that we know and love today?

Again nobody knows. The generally  accepted story is that nare-zushi  

did not much catch on because of the long  preparation time as well as the taste.

As the name implies, the rice ends up  extremely sour. When you eat the thing,  

you scraped off the rice. A story  written in the 12th century Heian  

period noted that you "wouldn't  notice if vomit was mixed in".

At some point in the 1400s, Japanese  cooks shortened the fermentation  

period to create nama-narezushi.  "Nama" means "raw" in Japanese,  

implying that the fish was being taken out  maybe a month earlier and eaten together  

with the rice. The shorter fermentation  process helped make this food more popular.

Then in the 1600s, cooks start introducing  vinegar. Perhaps in an attempt to further  

accelerate the fermentation process. Ergo the  name Haya-zushi, or "fast made sushi". At some  

point in the early 1800s, the fermentation  was entirely removed for vinegar'ed rice.

The sushi most people recognize is  Nigiri-zushi (握り寿司) - a piece of  

fish tinged with wasabi lightly pressed  into a small mound of vinegar'ed rice.

The chef most frequently credited with inventing  this style was Hanaya Yohei (華屋與兵衛). He started  

selling it out of his porch in the  city of Tokyo or Edo in the 1820s,  

and then opened a food stall and restaurant. The style was an instant hit in Edo and rapidly  

spread to the rest of Japan. Perhaps  because the Great Kanto Earthquake of  

1923 displaced many Edo sushi chefs and  forced them to set up in other regions.

## Making Sushi

Producing a Nigiri-sushi  involves two separate tasks.

First is the preparation of the fresh  fish or "Neta" (ネタ). Get the fish.  

Cut it up. Whoop-de-doo. Who cares.  It's just a fish, bro. Let's move on.

The second task is the rice. Now this is the  special part. The rice itself is called the Shari.  

It is kept warm - at about body temperature - and  lightly vinegar-ed. When prepared for the sushi,  

it is called the "Shari-dama" (シャリ玉).  Which literally means "rice jewel".

By the way, I had quite a journey  tracking down what the actual heck  

to call this thing. And apparently I was  not alone. Writers and reporters over the  

years have call it "rice balls", "rice  fingers", "rice lumps" or just "rice".

Anyway. The preparation of the rice lump demands  exquisite technique and is seen as an art in of  

itself. A good Shari-dama is firm on the  outside. Firm enough to be picked up with  

chopsticks. But also soft and airy enough on  the inside to break apart inside your mouth.

To make it traditionally, the chef first wets his  

fingers in a bowl of vinegar-water  mixture. Then he - and it is almost  

always a "he" - picks up just the right  amount of rice from the tub via feel.

Then with a very light, boat-shaped  grip - sometimes called a  

"ukashi-nigiri" 浮かし握り or literally  "floating grip" - the chef swiftly  

puts together the Shari-dama with  a series of quick, precise presses.

It is said that it takes a sushi chef  about 4-5 years to learn and master  

this technique. At his peak, a  chef can produce about 300-350  

Shari-Dama per hour. Which sounds like  a lot, but as it turns out, not enough.

In 1958, a small sushi shop  owner named Shiraishi Yoshiaki  

opened the first conveyor belt sushi  restaurant, Mawaru Genroku Sushi. He  

was apparently inspired by a trip to either  a meat-packing or beer bottling factory.

The concept really rolled out after the 1970  World Fair in Osaka. But the conveyor-belt sushi  

boom caused a shortage of sushi masters with the  necessary years of training. What was to be done?

## Suzumo

In 1955, an entrepreneur named Kisaku Suzuki  (鈴木喜作) started a company called Suzumo.

At the beginning, Suzumo’s machines focused  on confectionary making. Like for example,  

an ice cream filling machine, the SM-2.

Or another machine for monaka, which is  a Japanese sweet made from red bean paste  

injected between two crisp wafers. I suppose  you can call it a ... wafer to wafer bonding.

But at some point during the 1970s, Suzumo started  going through challenges with their sweets and  

confectionary machines. The small 50-employee  company needed a new market to survive.

## Loving Rice

One thing that I think I can confidently say  about this guy is that he really likes rice.

Suzumo's logo proudly declares, "We  love rice". Suzuki sees rice as a  

pillar of Japanese culture. In a 1993 interview,  

he declared that his "dream plan" was to spread  "rice culture". No protein diet for this fellow.

In the 1960s, changing diets and new,  more productive Green Revolution farming  

techniques led to rice oversupply situations  that damaged rice farmers. So in 1970,  

the Japanese government set up the "rice  acreage control system", or Gentan (減反).

In it, the government sets a national rice  production limit based on projected demand.  

In such a scheme, the government might even pay  

rice farmers not to plant their rice  paddies to avoid going over the limit.

I covered the Gentan in a prior video  about the ongoing Japanese rice crisis.

Enforcing the Gentan can get confrontational  with farmers who want to grow rice but aren’t  

allowed to. In 1976, Suzuki watched about  one such clash on TV and it set him off.

Having grown up during World War II,  he experienced profound hunger and  

starvation. And now the government  was paying farmers not to grow food!

He began thinking about ideas to stimulate rice  consumption in Japan. One such idea was to make  

quality sushi more accessible and affordable to  ordinary folks via automation. According to a  

2002 interview with one of his employees,  Suzuki one day suddenly told the company:

> Confectionery is over! Make  a machine for rice! And make it  

a nigiri-sushi machine! No  one else has made one yet!

The employees had no idea how to do this. Up  until then, people presumed that a sushi's rice  

balls can only be made with a chef's careful  hands after many years of learning the craft.  

Nevertheless they got to carrying it out.

## Making a Machine

The machine had to be simple to operate, highly  productive, and easy to dissemble and clean.

Suzumo's engineers began development by filming a  

sushi chef's hands and trying  to replicate the movements,  

mechanically. After two years, they showed the  first robot prototype to a team of sushi chefs.

The chefs hated the results. They said it was  not sushi. They thought it was more like a rice  

dumpling or an older, more ancestral form of  sushi called "pressed sushi" or Oshi-zushi.

The second prototype worked far better. First,  

rice is fed into the machine  from the top via a hopper.

The machine then fluffs up the rice using a  series of rotating "loosener" and "scraper"  

bars. This is crucial in getting the  air pockets that sushi-lovers desire.

Then the machine measures and rolls  out a small oval-shaped ball of rice.

The rice ball then rolls down a conveyor  belt where it is gently pressed into  

shape from both the horizontal and  vertical directions by metal molds.

This was a definite improvement. But again,  

the sushi chefs were not satisfied, saying  that the rice oval was still too firm.  

One suggested to somehow emulate the  elasticity of the palm of a human hand.

The Suzumo team said, "Yes Chef!" And after a  long trial-and-error process, they discovered  

that they can replicate this elasticity using the  soft silicone used for the nips of a baby bottle.  

That was the final piece. The machine, called  the ST-77, was completed in September 1981.

## Launch

Suzumo's original marketing name for the ST-77 was  

the rather drab "Edomae Sushi  Automatic Nigiri Machine".

To publicize the machine, the ST-77  was featured on afternoon television  

in October 1981 where it competed in  a 40-person taste test against a real  

nigiri-sushi chef. It performed wonderfully,  leading to a swarm of media coverage.

Later, the famous Fuji TV host  Masataka Itsumi dubbed it the  

"Sushi Robot" and the nickname stuck.  Robot purists might claim that it ain't  

a robot but I reckon since it's got  hands and claws, the moniker works.

Anyway, the Sushi Robot perfectly meshed with  the booming conveyor-belt sushi industry. The  

ST-77 can produce up to 1,200 Shari-damas  per hour, four times higher than a human.  

The chef can then focus on applying the  wasabi and the fish, mollusk, or fish eggs.

Yes there were some concerns. Akinori Narisawa,  

who worked at the aforementioned Genroku conveyor  belt restaurant, said in a 1982 interview:

> People think of sushi as a handmade product,  and it's going to be hard to change that image

He also worried that the robots will make  sushi into a "uniformly bland" experience.  

But the machine's economics were too compelling  to disregard. The ST-77 slashed the per-sushi  

production cost from an estimated $1.50  to just 50-70 cents (in 1994 dollars).

The Suzumo Sushi Robot hit the market in  January 1982 at a price of 1.6 million yen or  

$6,900. Suzumo was prepared to  sell about 20 units per month,  

but received 120 unit orders right off the bat.

## Seeding Sushi Shops

Like I said, the machine's first  customers were sushi shops.

But soon after that, Suzumo started receiving  inquiries from entrepreneurs lacking any prior  

sushi experience but wanting to start their own  restaurant. In a rare 1993 interview, Suzuki said:

> We get inquiries from many places from people  saying, 'I want to open a sushi shop,' and most  

of them think they can do it immediately if they  just have a sushi robot. However, that's not the  

reality. I advise them, 'It will be too difficult  with just a sushi robot, so you should stop.'

But for those with the right mindset - and the  

right shop location - Suzumo would  back them "100%". Suzuki continues:

> We established two operation centers at  our headquarters and our Tokyo factory so  

they can study the know-how before setting  up the machines in their actual store ...

> From how to handle the hardware  to business strategy, store design,  

and even methods for sourcing ingredients,  we can provide guidance on everything ...

> There is not a single shop that  has introduced our machinery and  

started a sushi shop whose business has failed

## Competitors

Suzumo's success in the conveyor-belt sushi  industry brought competitors. Throughout  

the 1990s, at least eight companies  introduced their own sushi robots.

The two most significant are Tomoe Engineering  and AUTEC. Tomoe Engineering was a spinoff from  

a food service company called Tomoe Food  Service, which ran a sushi restaurant.

Facing their own labor shortage issues,  they produced a small machine that bloomed  

into a whole line of business. They are  smaller, but well-respected. And some  

articles seem to say that their device  came out even before Suzumo's, in 1980.

AUTEC is the other major competitor  - the second largest in the market  

actually by some estimates. This is a weird one.

AUTEC's parent company is Audio-Technica,  

the Japanese maker of headphones,  microphones, and turntables.

Founded in 1962, Audio-Technica's initial  core products were high-end record player  

cartridges - essentially  the needles for phonographs.

But in the 1980s, Philips released the  CD, spoiling the phonograph business.

What to do? Well, Audio-Technica's founder  Hideo Matsushita really loved sushi. And  

since they were already trying a lot  of things, he suggested sushi robots.

Their first sushi ball machine, the ASM50, came  out in 1984. It was a bright-colored, hand-powered  

"cooking toy" for kids to make sushi rice balls  at home. You turned a handle and balls came out.

The toys became unexpectedly popular - families  used them to throw these "sushi parties" at home.

Customer feedback eventually motivated  

the company to produce more advanced  commercial machinery like the ASM430.

In the end, Audio-Technica's audio division  successfully went into headphones and such,  

and that is their core business today.  AUTEC remains a part of the overall  

company - contributing about 10% of revenue  - despite having little or no synergy with  

the core business. It is just something they  do on the side and they seem cool with that.

## Suzumo Today

Suzumo nevertheless continues to be number one,  

and has since rolled out a  whole line of Sushi Robots.

In 1991, Suzumo produced a robot that  automated the production of the "nori" roll,  

where fish and vegetables are rolled along  with rice and seaweed using a bamboo mat.

Humans had to learn precise, rhythmical hand  motions to roll these. Some sushi masters would  

spend 3-10 years to master the skill. Today's  Nori-Bots can do 900 to 1,300 rolls in an hour.

Suzumo also produced a robot for producing the  

"inari" sushis - made from vinegar'ed  rice inside a tofu pouch. I love these.

Today, the modern SSN-JLA can produce 4,800  rice lumps per hour and can be fitted with  

attachments to help create other types of  sushi like the Gunkan "battleship" type sushis.

Other improvements came in the form of discretion.  

Most early machine orders came from takeaway shops  and fast food sushi restaurants. There the bulky,  

blocky-looking ST-77 - about 1 meter wide  and 1 meter tall - can be hidden from sight.

But fewer orders came from higher-end  sushi restaurants. Store owners worried  

that customers won't eat sushi made by a  machine sitting at the counter next to them.

So in the mid-1990s, Suzuki told the Suzumo  team to redesign the machine so that it can  

fit inside a standard-sized rice tub, or  "ohitsu". So all the customer sees is the  

sushi chef reaching into the tub and pulling  out a pre-made rice ball. Or rice finger.

The new machine was called the SSG-GTA  or Sushi Chef's Helper and was released  

in 1999 after a five year development  period. It makes me now wonder how many  

sushi restaurants I have been to that use  this machine, and I just never noticed it.

## Conclusion

Suzumo continues to command a sizable  share of the sushi robot market though  

precise estimates are not available. Maybe  anywhere from above 60% to as high as 85%?

But in line with their slogan, they  consider themselves a rice-device  

company. So over the years they  have expanded their robot line  

up beyond just sushi. Like dispensary  machines that put rice into rice bowls.

A personal favorite of mine is the machine  that produces the patties for the rice burgers  

that I see sold at MOS Burger. They  are actually quite good, go try them.

The company is now led by  one of Suzuki's descendants,  

Minako Suzuki. Their goal continues to  be getting more people to eat and enjoy  

rice both in Japan and all over the world.  Okay I am done, I want to go eat sushi now.