【Reading】こいずみよへえ

【English Name】Koizumi Yohei

Koizumi Yohei was a sushi chef active in the Edo period, also widely known by the name Hanaya Yohei. He was born in 1799 in Reiganjima (near present-day Chuo Ward, Tokyo).

His childhood name was Yasuke. His father ran a greengrocer's shop, but having lost both parents one after another in childhood, at age 9 he went into service at a fudasashi (rice-broker) house in Kuramae. After working in that job through his twenties, he passed through trades such as a secondhand-goods dealer and a confectioner, and is said to have started the sushi business around 1810.

Around the beginning of the Bunsei era (1818-1830), he is said to have created the method of nigiri sushi distinct from the pressed sushi (oshi-zushi) that had been mainstream until then, leaving his name as the founder of Edo-style nigiri sushi. In 1824 he opened "Hanaya" in Motomachi, Ryogoku (present-day Ryogoku, Sumida Ward). His sushi using wasabi is said to have been a form extremely close to modern nigiri sushi.

There is a record that he ran afoul of the luxury-prohibition orders of the Tenpo Reforms and was imprisoned over conger eel (anago) sushi. He died in 1858 at age 60. Yohei-zushi is counted as one of the "Three Great Sushi of Edo" (Edo San-zushi), and a marker has been installed at the former site by the Sumida Ward Board of Education.