【Reading】すししょくにん

【English Name】Sushi Chef

A chef who specializes in making sushi is called a sushi chef (sushi shokunin). An old saying holds that "it takes three years to learn to cook the rice and eight years to master the nigiri," and historically it was said that becoming a full-fledged sushi chef required at least about ten years of apprenticeship.

The required skills are wide-ranging: not only an eye for selecting ingredients and the techniques of preparation (shikomi), but also the skill of forming the rice (shari), and even the hospitality skills needed to face customers across the counter. Running one's own shop also makes business knowledge indispensable. Even chefs skilled in Japanese cuisine (washoku) often find sushi difficult, and it is known as a field that especially tests individual sense and talent.

Under Japanese law, no specific qualification or license is required to make sushi, so the field is widely open. At conveyor-belt sushi (kaiten-zushi) chains and delivery operations, it is common for staff with only short-term training, or rice-ball forming machines (sushi robots), to handle production. The machine for forming shari was put into practical use in 1981 and quickly spread among chain operators.

In recent years, as an alternative to the traditional master-apprentice system, sushi vocational schools that teach skills through systematic curricula have appeared in various places. There are even reported cases of people opening shops after only a few months of study and earning high customer ratings, and the path to becoming a chef has greatly diversified.