SHIMODA, Shizuoka Prefecture—Sushi chefs require years and years of training to perfect their culinary craft.

But at the Sushi Lab Mimatsu restaurant here, the sushi-making employees receive only three days of lessons from Ryuji Uematsu, the 33-year-old main chef.

Uematsu hopes that ties formed between customers and the “nonprofessional” chefs will not only help to revive sushi consumption in Shimoda but will also spark a rebound in the city.

Blessed with beaches and hot springs, Shimoda prospered as a seaport and tourism site within easy reach of the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Shimoda Port also boasts Japan’s largest haul of “kinmedai” (alfonsinos), a prized fish species.

But the city in recent years has suffered from economic stagnation and depopulation.

Sushi Lab Mimatsu opened in November last year on the grounds of Ryosenji temple, where officials of Japan’s shogunate held talks with U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858) during the closing days of the feudal age.

Perry had arrived elsewhere in Japan with a fleet of “Black Ships” to call on the country to lift its policy of national seclusion.

The Shimoda Treaty, an appendix to the 1854 Japan-U.S. Treaty of Peace and Amity, was also signed at this Buddhist temple.

Uematsu, the fourth-generation proprietor of Mimatsu Zushi, a sushi restaurant founded 89 years ago in Shimoda, picked this location for his new eatery on the request of Ryusenji’s deputy head priest, a classmate during his school days.

Sushi Lab Mimatsu offers hand-pressed sushi with an array of ingredients, including kinmedai, tuna and “kohada” (young dotted gizzard shad), at a flat rate of 300 yen ($2.01) a piece.

All ingredients are fresh, top-quality products procured at Shimoda Port.

The low price is possible because of the nonprofessional part-time chefs working there under Uematsu.

The restaurant can accommodate only eight stand-up customers. There is no display case for sushi ingredients, so customers can clearly see how the sushi is hand-pressed in the kitchen.

The part-time chefs are from all walks of life, including a company employee, a self-employed worker, a graduate student and a “local vitalization cooperator” who works on commission from a local government.

Fifteen men and women, ranging in age from their 20s through 50s, take shifts in the restaurant’s kitchen. Uematsu has trained them in the art of hand-pressing sushi, and in nothing else, over three days.

CONDENSED TRAINING

Among the part-time chefs is Shogo Konishi, a deputy head of sales with Tokyo-based Sapporo Breweries Ltd.

The 45-year-old said he has often been asked at overseas parties to make sushi by people who assume he can do so because he is Japanese.

Konishi took lessons at Uematsu’s hands-on course about three years ago.

“I feel happy when I make sushi and people call it ‘great,’” Konishi said.

Given Konishi’s main job, serving customers is right up his alley, and his light and easy talk makes his customers laugh.

Uematsu supports the part-time chefs by taking charge of procurement and preparation of ingredients behind the scenes.

The hand-pressed sushi at Sushi Lab Mimatsu tastes similar to sushi prepared by professional chefs, Uematsu said.

An adage in the sushi industry goes something like: It takes three years to learn how to cook rice and eight more years to learn how to hand-press it.

Some say a sushi chef needs more than 10 years to become a full-fledged hand-presser. Uematsu himself trained for 11 years in Tokyo.

His unconventional idea of using nonprofessionals as sushi chefs stemmed from Shimoda’s decline.

PRESERVING SHIMODA’S SUSHI CULTURE

Shimoda had 18 sushi restaurants in the 1990s, when Japan was still basking in the afterglow of the asset-inflated bubble economy.

Many of them have since closed down as their proprietors grew old with no successors. Only six sushi restaurants have survived in the city.

Mimatsu Zushi, operated by Uematsu’s family, gets crowded at the height of the tourist season with both regular customers and sightseers.

The restaurant once had to turn away customers because Uematsu’s father Mikio, the 64-year-old third-generation proprietor, could not handle all the orders by himself.

“What good is Shimoda if you cannot eat sushi there?” Uematsu said he asked himself at the time.

He began reflecting on measures to preserve Shimoda’s sushi culture.

After completing his training, Uematsu returned to Shimoda in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the restaurant industry faced a critical situation with people refraining from dining out.

He started a sushi catering service, the first of its sort on the Izu Peninsula. It involved him going to the homes of clients and hand-pressing sushi right before their eyes.

The service was very well received.

Uematsu took sushi ingredients and rice with him not only to private residences but also to villas, business parties and retirement homes.

He also realized his long-cherished idea of organizing a course on sushi hand-pressing.

The participants’ responses exceeded his expectations.

“I wish I could hand-press even more sushi,” one of them said. “I want to be better at hand-pressing,” said another.

Uematsu understood that sushi hand-pressed by nonprofessionals can still make people happy if there are ties with those who eat them.

Nonprofessional hand-pressers could not only help resolve the shortage of sushi chefs in the industry but could also help attract people to Shimoda if the individual chefs gained regular customers, he said.

Sushi Lab Mimatsu is the venue of an “experiment in forging ties,” Uematsu said.

He said he hopes part-time chefs will eventually work also in catering.

Uematsu also said he has another idea up his sleeve for revitalizing Shimoda, but he declined to give details.

NEIGHBORHOOD SUSHI RESTAURANTS DISAPPEARING

Shimoda is not the only place in Japan that has lost sushi restaurants.

The internal affairs ministry’s Economic Census for Business Activity shows there were 22,557 sushi restaurants, including conveyor belt eateries, across Japan in 2016. That figure dropped to 19,122 in the 2021 survey.

By contrast, the number of sushi restaurants with 50 or more workers surged from 1,691 to 1,978 during the same period.

These figures indicate that major sushi restaurant chains are operating more outlets every year while neighborhood sushi restaurants are disappearing.

In the 2021 survey, Tokyo was home to the most sushi restaurants of all prefectures, at 2,811, followed by Osaka Prefecture’s 1,466.

By number of sushi restaurants per 100,000 residents, Yamanashi Prefecture was the national leader, at 24.9, followed by Ishikawa Prefecture at 24.6 and Tokyo at 20.0.

Shizuoka Prefecture has 657 sushi restaurants, or 18.1 per 100,000 residents, which puts it at eighth place in Japan.

The other prefectures ranked high contain fishing ports, with Tokyo as an exception.