Let’s be real. Most of us treat sushi as a quick, satisfying lunch between lectures. Grab a plate off the belt, dunk it in soy sauce, done. Sushi first appeared in pre-war Singapore in the early 20th century within the island’s old Japanese community district around Bugis. However, it vanished during World War II. The modern return of sushi began in the late 1950s and 1960s — marked by a restaurant inside the Japanese Association in 1958 — before expanding via high-end hotel spots and mass-market chains in the 1990s.
But sushi’s backstory is honestly more interesting than this, and knowing it might just make your next sushi run hit different.
1. OG Sushi Didn’t Have Rice You’d Actually Eat
The earliest ancestor of sushi is a dish called narezushi — fish that’s salt-cured, then packed with rice and left to ferment for up to a year. The rice was never meant to be eaten; it was just there to kickstart fermentation. A version of this still exists today in Shiga Prefecture, called funazushi, made with freshwater fish from Lake Biwa. Locals rate it as a top-tier delicacy. Outsiders have compared the smell to rotting garbage. Wild range, we know.
2. Sushi’s Roots Might Actually Trace Back to Southeast Asia
Here’s the plot twist: this fish-fermenting technique probably didn’t start in Japan at all. Researchers believe it originated somewhere around northern Thailand, Laos, or southern China, before making its way to Japan alongside rice farming. Thailand still has its own version today, called pla som. So next time someone gatekeeps sushi as strictly Japanese, you’ve got receipts.
3. That Marinated Tuna on the Menu? That’s the Original Style
Raw fish sushi as we know it — fresh fish on vinegared rice — only really came together during Japan’s Edo period (1600–1868), when vinegared rice replaced the year-long fermentation as a shortcut. Even then, early Edomae sushi rarely served raw tuna plain. It was usually marinated in soy sauce first, a style still found today under the name zuke on sushi menus.
Why marinate it at all? Simple: no fridges back then. Soy sauce acted as a light cure, drawing out moisture and helping the fish stay safe to eat for longer, while also masking any dip in freshness. It wasn’t until modern refrigeration and distribution came along that serving plain raw fish became viable. So that “fancy” marinated tuna slice you sometimes see today isn’t some upgraded, gourmet twist — it’s actually closer to sushi’s original form than the plain raw stuff, and a nod to a time when marinating was a necessity, not a choice.
4. Sushi Almost Didn’t Go Mainstream in Japan Either
Nigirizushi — the hand-pressed sushi most of us picture — started as a local Edo (old Tokyo) street food. It only spread nationwide after two disasters forced it to: the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, which scattered Tokyo food vendors across the country, and the food shortages after World War II.
Kaitenzushi (conveyor-belt sushi), the format most of us are very familiar with, didn’t even exist until 1958, debuting in Osaka before going nationwide after Expo 1970.
5. The California Roll Basically Sushi-Pilled the Western World
Sushi barely existed outside Japanese communities in the West until the 1980s. The dish that changed everything? The California roll — raw salmon, avocado, no visible raw fish to scare off beginners. It became the gateway dish that got the rest of the world hooked, eventually leading to sushi showing up on flights, in supermarkets, and in some genuinely unhinged forms.
Bonus: Your Favourite Roll Types Have Origin Stories Too
Gunkanzushi (the ones with a nori “wall” holding in loose toppings like uni or ikura) isn’t ancient at all — it was invented in 1941 at a restaurant called Kyubey in Tokyo’s Ginza district. The story goes that a regular customer brought in fresh sea urchin and asked if it could be turned into sushi. The problem: uni is way too soft and crumbly to sit on rice like a normal nigiri topping. The restaurant’s founder solved it by wrapping a band of nori around the rice to form a little cup — and because the shape looked like a warship, it got named gunkan, meaning “battleship.”
Makizushi (your classic rolled sushi) actually owes its existence to a manufacturing breakthrough. Nori (seaweed sheet) used to only exist as a rough paste — it wasn’t until around 1750, when a papermaking technique got adapted to seaweed, that thin, flat nori sheets became possible to mass-produce. That’s what made rolling rice and fillings inside seaweed sheets viable in the first place. It quickly caught on as an easy, mess-free food you could eat on the move — which, fittingly, is still why it’s most students’ go-to order between lectures today.
So next time you’re queuing for sushi between classes, remember: you’re eating a dish with a 1,000+ year fermentation origin story, borrowed roots from Southeast Asia, and a glow-up that took centuries — plus a couple of 20th-century plot twists along the way.
Primary source: Nippon.com — “Sushi’s Epic Journey: From Slow-Fermented Fish to Global Fast Food” by Morieda Takashi. Additional details on gunkanzushi and makizushi origins sourced from Kyubey’s official history and Wikipedia’s History of Sushi.
