Everything you know about sushi is wrong...

Or at least counterintuitive.

Reason Magazine - The Day of the Flying Fish:

"For traditionalists in 19th-century Japan, a new sushi place was a sign the neighborhood was going to hell. In 1852 one writer grumped about the proliferation of sushi stalls in booming industrial Tokyo. The McDonald’s of their day, the stalls offered hungry factory workers a quick, cheap meal of fish and sweetened, vinegared rice. If the fish wasn’t top of the line, well, a splash of soy sauce and a dab of spicy wasabi perked up a serving of fish gizzards nicely, with some antimicrobial benefits to boot.

Today that writer’s spiritual descendants dwell on food chat boards like Chowhound, where calling a new Japanese place “inauthentic” or deriding it as “strip mall” or “food court” quality is the kiss of death. When we think of high-end, “authentic” sushi today, we envision rich, fatty slices of smooth tuna and creamy salmon arranged on a pristine plate—the height of elegant Japanese cuisine. But sushi wasn’t always elegant, and salmon and tuna are relatively recent additions to the menu. In that sense, sushi’s appearance in food courts worldwide is more a return to the dish’s common roots than a betrayal of authenticity. Sushi has always been in flux, with new ingredients and techniques added as convenience demanded.

...The taste for richer fish such as tuna arrived with American troops after World War II, who introduced enthusiastic red meat eating to a previously ascetic people. The most prized sushi today is fatty tuna from the belly of the fish, or toro. But before Americans started ordering nigiri—raw fish laid on balls of rice—most traditional sushi chefs looked down on tuna with the same disdain a French chef has for fat-free mayonnaise.

Likewise, the American concept of tuna—the white, flaky stuff in cans—had no place for the rich, red flesh of the 600-pound creatures being caught in the cold water of the Atlantic. The huge tuna that now spark intense bidding wars at Japan’s Tsukiji seafood market were used primarily to make cat food.

...Everything changed in the early 1970s. Akira Okazaki was trying to solve a classic business dilemma for his company, Japan Airlines. His planes were flying to America loaded down with electronics but coming home empty. What could he use to fill them? The tuna craze was already under way as postwar tastes evolved and bank accounts grew, and a few exploratory trips revealed an oversupply of tuna in America’s waters.

...Chowhounders who fret about lost authenticity or lament the commercialization of cuisine should think again. There is no such thing as authentic sushi, and there never has been. There was no moment when sushi was purely traditional. And tuna and avocado rolls taste a heck of lot better than a cask of semi-rotten whitefish packed with rice."