【Reading】すしやたい

【English Name】Sushi Yatai

Sushi yatai refers to the mobile form of sushi vending that became widespread in the late Edo period. When nigiri sushi was born during the Bunsei era (1820s), it spread as Edo street-stall (yatai) food alongside tempura and soba.

Edo at the time was a great city of over a million people, with a high ratio of single men and strong demand for convenient eating out. Because land for setting up shops was limited in the cramped townspeople's districts, stall-style operation became mainstream. The Morisada Manko records that three or four sushi and tempura stalls each stood lined up in every town of the bustling districts.

The standard size of a stall was about 180 cm wide and 90 cm deep, and the artisan worked seated on roughly half a tatami mat as he formed the sushi. The shift to working while standing is said to date from after the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923). Nigiri sushi at the time was two to three times the size of today's, and was served at 8 mon per piece (equivalent to about 100 yen today).

Entering the Showa era, stalls declined due to stricter traffic laws and sanitation regulations, and by around 1939-1940 they had nearly disappeared. After the war, the GHQ's Emergency Measures Ordinance for the Restaurant Business made operation difficult for sushi restaurants as a whole, but some shops continued by a consigned-processing method in which they processed rice brought by customers. Through such developments, sushi shifted from the street stall to the storefront, counter-style business.