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Cover of 鮨 (Sushi)

Upper intermediate · JLPT N2

鮨Sushi — The Sushi Shop Below the Slope

by Okamoto Kanoko (岡本かの子, 1889–1939)

  • JLPT N2
  • 13,153 characters
  • 10 parts
  • about 110 minutes

Okamoto Kanoko's 鮨 is a quiet, character-driven story set in a small sushi shop, Fukuzushi, in a hilly Tokyo neighbourhood of slopes and cliffs where the downtown and uptown districts meet. Tomoyo, the owners' schoolgirl daughter, waits on a varied crowd of regulars. She becomes curious about one of them, Minato, a melancholy, refined gentleman of over fifty whom everyone calls 'Sensei'. When she finally asks him why he eats sushi so often, he answers with a long story from his childhood about a sickly boy who could hardly bear to eat, and about his mother. The tone is delicate and observant rather than dramatic. Much of the pleasure lies in small details: the order in which Minato eats, the owner's private dishes for favoured customers, the play of light at dusk. For learners the main challenges are the dense literary narration and the prewar spellings. The dialogue is everyday Tokyo speech and offers some relief. The middle section, told as a story within the story, has a clear and moving shape that rewards careful reading.

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Contents

  1. A Quiet Sushi Shop Among the SlopesIn a hilly Tokyo neighbourhood between the downtown and the uptown districts stands Fukuzushi, a small sushi shop that Tomoyo's parents took over and that gradually began to prosper. Its varied regulars come to escape the pressures of daily life and to enjoy small, carefree pleasures. In the late afternoon the shop is at its busiest, and the owner sometimes brings out a plate of pressed sushi for them himself.
  2. Father's Secret Snack and a Quiet HouseholdThe owner of Fukuzushi lets his customers taste a pressed sushi of salted saury that he makes for himself. They are delighted, but he refuses to sell it, and such special dishes come out only for regulars when he feels like it. The narration then describes Tomoyo's parents, who live side by side in quiet independence and agree only on educating her, and the frank, slightly solitary character that Tomoyo develops growing up among the shop's male customers.
  3. Fish in a Stream and a Quiet RegularTomoyo compares the coming and going of Fukuzushi's customers to fish drifting through a spring stream, with herself as the moss they briefly touch. She handles their teasing lightly and is the shop's modest signboard girl. The narration then introduces Minato, a melancholy, refined bachelor of somewhat over fifty whom the shop calls 'Sensei,' and whose fixed order of eating sushi the owner knows by heart.
  4. Tomoyo's Quiet JealousyTomoyo becomes fascinated by Minato's distant gaze and quietly tries to make him look at her, while her father dismisses it as mischief. Among the regulars Minato is well liked because he repays every small kindness generously, but Tomoyo dislikes how eagerly he responds. When he starts drinking with other customers, she snatches his cup away, driven less by concern for his health than by an odd jealousy.
  5. A Chance Meeting on the Main StreetTomoyo grows self-conscious around Minato and sometimes ignores him at the shop. One early-summer day she runs into him outside the pet shop, where he has bought a transparent ghost fish, and the two sit together in a vacant lot on the edge of a cliff. When Tomoyo asks why he eats sushi so often, Minato begins to tell the story of his childhood.
  6. A Boy Who Could Not EatMinato's story turns to a strange, delicate child who hates most food, eats rice crackers as if listening to music, and feels that eating defiles his body. His family's fortunes are slowly declining under a proud, timid father. Faint with hunger at sunset, the boy calls out to an imagined 'Mother', but his real mother answers and begs him to eat properly.
  7. A Mother Bows to Her SonThe delicate boy finds egg and laver the foods that suit him best, and he chews sour fruit picked around the city's hills. When the school blames his family for his thinness and his father takes it out on his mother, she bows before him and begs him to eat. He forces down the family's ordinary meal and vomits at once, and the next day his mother sets out brand-new cooking tools on the veranda, seats him across from her and places a plate before him.
  8. A Mother's Sushi Wins Over Her SonTo coax her fussy son into eating, the mother makes sushi in front of him with brand-new utensils and freshly washed hands. He eats an egg sushi, then nervously tries squid and white fish, and is thrilled to find he can eat real fish. Delighted, he shrieks for more, while his mother hides her joy behind the expression he will remember all his life.
  9. A Mother's Sushi Heals the BoyThe mother keeps making sushi with her own hands, and the boy eats eagerly, sensing that his real mother and the imagined mother he secretly calls to are becoming one. He learns to eat fish, grows strong and handsome, and his once-indifferent father begins taking him drinking, so he becomes a young idler while the family fortune collapses and his parents quarrel. He passes easily through school and university and finds work, yet he is weighed down by a vague, painful melancholy he cannot shake.
  10. The Sensei Disappears from FukuzushiMinato finishes his story and tells Tomoyo that the boy in it was himself, explaining that sushi now brings back memories of his mother. As evening falls in the burnt-out hospital garden, he gives her his ghostfish and leaves, and he never comes back to Fukuzushi. Tomoyo grieves for a while, but in time she only vaguely imagines him eating at some other sushi shop somewhere.

Before you read

  • Learn the prewar kanji spellings early. The narration writes 仕舞う for しまう (as in 〜て仕舞う), 呉れる for くれる, and 乍ら for ながら. Once you recognise these, many sentences that look difficult turn out to be simple.
  • Keep track of who is speaking and in what voice. The owner uses brisk downtown speech (あたし, contractions like 〜ちまう). Tomoyo is casual and girlish, Minato is courteous and educated, and the mother in his story speaks in warm, coaxing tones. Speech style often tells you who is talking even without a speaker tag.
  • Expect a frame shift in Parts 5–10. Minato's reminiscence starts out told about 'a child' in the third person, and the narrator only links that boy to Minato at the end. Read Parts 6–9 as a story within the story.
  • Learn the food and sushi vocabulary before you start: 鮨, 握る, 玉子 (egg), 海苔 (laver), 烏賊 (squid), 白身 (white fish), 酢 (vinegar), and 煎餅 (rice crackers). These words carry the emotional turning point in Parts 7–8.
  • Watch for the recurring patterns that build the literary narration, especially 〜の如く for similes, 〜に違いない for the narrator's inferences, and 〜だの〜だの for lists of customers' habits and complaints.

Words to know

The most useful words from the notes across the story.

WordMeaningJLPT
常連じょうれんregular customer—
刺戟しげきstimulation, excitementOlder spelling of 刺激.N3
拵えてこしらえるto make; to preparedictionary form: 拵えるSomewhat old-fashioned, colloquial word for 作る.N2
却ってかえってon the contrary; if anythingMarks a result opposite to what one would expect.N2
性分しょうぶんnature, temperament—
河鹿かじかkajika frog, a stream frog kept for its beautiful songPrized in summer for its cool, clear call.—
咀嚼そしゃくchewing, masticationA formal, medical-sounding word; also used figuratively for 'digesting' ideas.—
晩酌ばんしゃくa drink of sake with the evening meal—
手品師てじなしconjurer, magician手品 = conjuring trick; 〜師 marks a professional.—
先生せんせいSensei: a respectful title for a teacher, doctor or learned personUsed here as a nickname for a refined customer whose job nobody knows.N5
叮嚀ていねいcareful, painstakingdictionary form: 丁寧Older spelling of 丁寧; today usually means 'polite', but here it means 'with great care'.N4
譲ってゆずるto hand over, to transfer (ownership)dictionary form: 譲るN3
一致いっちcoinciding, matching一致する = to match; 一致しかけ = beginning to match.N3
下町したまちthe old downtown districts (of Tokyo)Contrasted with 山の手, the hilly uptown residential districts; the two words suggest different social worlds.N2
遠足えんそくschool outing, excursion遠足会 is an older way to say a school trip event.N2

Plot summary

Show the full summary (contains spoilers)

Tomoyo grows up serving the male regulars at her parents' sushi shop. She takes their teasing lightly but becomes fascinated by the aloof Minato. She tries to catch his eye, snatches away his sake cup out of a strange jealousy, and then grows shy around him. One early-summer day they meet by chance and sit together on a cliff-edge lot. Minato tells her about a boy who found food repellent until his mother made sushi for him with her own hands. Through that sushi the boy learned to eat and grew strong, but he drifted into idleness as his family declined, and he was left with a lasting melancholy. Minato reveals that the boy was himself and that sushi brings back his mother. He gives Tomoyo his ghost fish and never returns. In time Tomoyo only vaguely imagines him eating at some other sushi shop.

About the author

Okamoto Kanoko was a Tokyo-born writer who first became known as a tanka poet in the circle of Yosano Akiko. She was also a serious student of Buddhism and wrote and lectured on it. She was married to the cartoonist Okamoto Ippei, and their son was the artist Okamoto Tarō. She turned to fiction only in the last years of her life, and in a short burst of activity she produced the works she is best remembered for, including 'Rōgishō' (老妓抄) and 'Boshi jojō' (母子叙情). Her prose is known for its rich, sensuous imagery and its interest in desire, vitality and the bond between mother and child.

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