Employees pose in front of Tokyo sidewalk restaurants on a sunny day in May, 1934. The delivery bicycle belongs to Yanase Sushi (the shop with the white sign and red kanji characters).
At the time that the New York State Education Department commissioned this slide, sushi was basically unknown outside Japan.
The first English language guide of Japan that mentions the dish in its index is Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire (1920). Although the guide does describe sashimi, it only briefly mentions sushi as a local product of the Sakawa River made of trout served at stations nearby Odawara in Kanagawa Prefecture1:
A product of this stream, in the shape of a small silvery trout seasoned with vinegar, cooked with rice, and called sushi, is sold at this and other stations (16 sen), and though unsavory and unpalatable to foreigners, it is much liked by the Japanese.
It took a while, but eventually sushi made the jump abroad. America’s first sushi restaurant (Restaurant Nippon) was opened in 1964 in New York. Chicago had to wait until 1967 (Kamehachi).
One of the first conveyer belt sushi restaurants outside Japan was opened in 1974, Genroku Sushi (元禄寿司) at 366 Fifth Avenue.2 A conveyer belt sushi restaurant opened in Los Angeles in 1980 launched a worldwide sushi boom. Paris saw its first sushi restaurant in 1984, and the first European sushi factory, making products for supermarkets, was established in Amsterdam in 1988. Sushi restaurants are found from Ho Chi Minh City, Bali and Katmandu to Vladivostok, Kuwait and Nairobi.3
Sushi now represents Japanese cuisine, and in many countries eating sushi is seen as a status symbol. When the first Michelin Guide for Tokyo was published in November 2007, the prestigious guide awarded two sushi restaurants with three stars. A total of 15 sushi restaurants were awarded one or more stars.4
How surprised Philip Terry would be if he could see how Japanese sushi restaurants have spread all over the world and are jammed-packed with “foreigners”.
This glass slide is one of a series of slides of Japan that was used by the New York State Education Department to teach students about Japan.
Notes
1 Terry, T. Philip (1920). Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire. Houghton Mifflin Company, 368.
2 Gerston, Jill (1974-10-04) The Reasons… The New York Times. Retrieved on 2023-09-03.
3 Watanabe, Zenjiro, The Development and Expansion of the Japanese Diet. Retrieved on 2008-02-21.
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Old Photos of Japan aims to be your personal museum for Japan's visual heritage and to bring the experiences of everyday life in old Japan to you.
To enhance our understanding of Japanese culture and society I track down, acquire, archive, and research images of everyday life, and give them context.
I share what I have found for free on this site, without ads or selling your data.
Your support helps me to continue doing so, and ensures that this exceptional visual heritage will not be lost and forgotten.
Thank you,
Kjeld Duits
Reference for Citations
Duits, Kjeld (). Tokyo 1934: Sidewalk Restaurants, OLD PHOTOS of JAPAN. Retrieved on January 31, 2026 (GMT) from https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/94/sidewalk-restaurants
harleigh fleming
I liked all these pictures, they must be very special to the Japanese. So they are to me, too.
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Kjeld Duits (Author)
Most Japanese have never seen photos like this. When I showed some of my collection to a Japanese visitor the other day, he told me that the thrill of seeing these photos gave him goose bumps!
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