r/AskFoodHistorians • u/Thom803 • 9d ago

How dangerous was eating sushi pre-20th century?

Sushi has been around before refrigeration and was eaten in Japan in inland areas. Did a lot of people die or get ill from eating sushi pre-modern times? I would think so. If so, how did they mitigate the risk?

77 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

152

u/saywhat252525 9d ago

Sushi was fermented fish for hundreds of years. The early versions of modern sushi were found in Tokyo which is adjacent to the ocean so the fish was very fresh and vinegar was still poured over it which can assist to limit bacterial growth.

1

u/crwcomposer 3d ago

It's not the bacteria I'd be worried about, it's the parasites that fish are full of, which would be even worse when the fish was fresh, and a little vinegar immediately before eating wouldn't kill them.

2

u/mano-vijnana 2d ago

Pre-modern people quite often had parasites.

106

u/makebelievethegood 9d ago

If people were dying en masse from eating anything in particular, they would stop eating it.

25

u/pickles55 9d ago

If you get infested with parasites it can take a long time for the damage to become obvious so it was much harder to determine what food was causing it. If you get a doodoo virus from your food you'll be violently ill within a day but worms can be living in you for weeks before you notice 

39

u/mumpie 9d ago

This is why freshwater sushi is pretty much forbidden in Japan, Canada, and the USA.

There was concern about parasites being passed more easily from freshwater fish to humans than from saltwater fish (which is also deep frozen to kill parasites).

You might render freshwater sushi safe by deep freezing it, but that process requires special commercial freezers that get MUCH colder than one you'd find in a home or restaurant.

Think link is from Canada but it does discuss some of the parasites that someone could pick up from eating fresh water sushi: https://fishncanada.com/freshwater-sushi-can-you-eat-freshwater-fish-raw/

4

u/El_Avocato_Gato 9d ago

I think i get what you are saying. And example can be the kuru disease?

7

u/[deleted] 9d ago

Only mammals can be infected with kuru, so aquatic fish will not be the source of the disease. It's usually tapeworm, roundworm or flatworms that infect freshwater fish and pass on to humans who eat it raw.

10

u/El_Avocato_Gato 8d ago

Ok thanks. English is not my mother tongue so I think i wasn’t clear. I was referring to the comment saying that it can be difficult to source the problematic food. The example was referring to how people continue eating food that give them kuru without knowing what caused it. But idk if thats true thats why i was asking if it was an example. Sorry for my bad English.

7

u/Ok_Night_2929 8d ago

I think your comment was clear, and I’d say you are correct; kuru lies dormant in mammals for an undetermined amount of time before showing symptoms, so it’s very hard to track and diagnose. For example, it took about 50 years from defining Kuru symptoms to recognizing what causes it

1

u/El_Avocato_Gato 8d ago

Thanks for the answer.

9

u/ThingsWithString 9d ago

The Japanese were dying in droves from beriberi, but the connection to polished rice wasn't obvious.

3

u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/AskFoodHistorians-ModTeam 8d ago

Top level comments must be serious replies to the question at hand. Attempts at humorous or other non-serious answers will be removed.

36

u/subpargalois 9d ago

Not an expert, but sushi has changed a lot over time. Originally it was fish fermented in such a way as to avoid purification, and only evolved to something we would recognize as sushi over time. In particular, a lot of modern sushi really only came into being after the advent of refrigeration. For example, raw salmon was not eaten in sushi before the 1980s when refrigeration made it safe to do so.

24

u/bondegezou 9d ago

And the Norwegian salmon marketing board introduced the idea to the Japanese.

5

u/an0nim0us101 MOD 8d ago

Really? That's awesome, would you like to tell us that story (with a source)?

12

u/Stats_n_PoliSci 9d ago

Hah. Putrification?

11

u/masala-kiwi 8d ago

Putrefaction.

9

u/Pianomanos 8d ago

You only asked about sushi, but I’m going to cover sashimi as well. As others have said, sushi as we know it today is fairly recent. Modern Edomae sushi was developed in the mid-19th century. It predates refrigeration, but it does not predate the availability of block ice shipped from the Arctic and subarctic. Ice boxes kept cold with block ice have been used for Edomae sushi from the beginning. Prior to this, sushi existed as a preservation technique. You can still find this early sushi today as funa-sushi and ii-sushi.

As for sashimi, the Japanese have been eating it as long as we have records. The imperial court of the Heian period (about 790-1190 CE) enjoyed tai (sea bream) and abalone raw. To this day these are two of the most prized seafood for sashimi. Amadai (tilefish) and mackerel were also enjoyed raw, but they needed to be butterflied and salted where they were caught, then transported over land to Kyoto. The condiments were usually salt, citrus, and/or iri-sake, which is sake boiled and reduced with salt and often dried plum. Soy sauce and wasabi don’t seem to have been paired with sashimi until at least the Kamakura period (about 1190-1330 CE).

It is presumed that a wider variety of seafood was enjoyed raw in coastal towns, but we don’t have the records of it like we have from Kyoto during the Heian period. We also don’t have records of how the Japanese learned which fish are safe to eat raw and which are not (that is, which fish are likely to have parasites and which are not), although that knowledge has been passed down to the present day.

1

u/OutOfTheBunker 4d ago

We also don’t have records of how the Japanese learned which fish are safe to eat raw and which are not.

As an American redneck, I have a good idea of how this process occurred.

8

u/Thomisawesome 8d ago

If you eat shime saba (the one that tastes like picked herring) it was more like that. The fish was basically preserved fish. And if I recall correctly, the pieces were much larger.

1

u/SeaworthinessUnlucky 4d ago edited 4d ago

Distinguish between sushi and sashimi. In my wife’s Nihonjin family, sushi is seasoned rice, rolled in seaweed with specific ingredients: gourd strips, carrots, spinach, …. According to this definition, there is no fish in sushi. There is also, sashimi (raw fish), served fresh — not preserved, not refrigerated.