【Reading】こめ

【English Name】Rice

The ingredient that fundamentally determines the quality of nigiri is none other than rice (kome), the grain that sushi artisans call shari. Taxonomically it corresponds to rice (scientific name: Oryza sativa), a cereal of the grass family, and it is a grain that continues to support tables on a global scale.

It provides most of its energy from starch, and also possesses protein, B-group vitamins, and a variety of minerals. Comparing at the stage of brown rice (genmai), which has not undergone the polishing process, with white rice, it has about 3 times the potassium, about 2 times the calcium, 8-10 times the vitamin B1, and about 4 times the dietary fiber, producing substantial differences.

The short-grain rice of the japonica variety is indispensable for sushi because its stickiness and sweetness after cooking stand out and it has properties suited to being made into vinegared rice. Tracing the origins of rice cultivation, the oldest example is cited as traces left at a site in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in China around 7500 BC. To the Japanese archipelago, rice cultivation was transmitted in the late Jomon period, and paddy-field agriculture spread to various regions in the course of the transition to the Yayoi period.

Throughout Japan's history, rice was the grain that formed the foundation of the tax system and economic structure. As seen in the rite in which the emperor offers the first ears of rice to the deities at the Niiname-sai, it has continued to carry exceptional weight in both faith and culture.