Talk:History of sushi

I've just split the Sushi article in two by separating its History section into a separate article (this one).

The initial words are a simple cut-and-paste from the sub-sections on the Sushi page. This means that at the moment this is a poorly structured article: no real introduction, no context, and therefore no clear flow. I intend to rectify that over the next few days, but if anybody want to beat me to it, please do.

DanielVonEhren 16:33, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This little note may be a little unnecessary, but I want to say that I'm really happy are adding to this article (except the parts about rat urine). The new information going in here is great.

DanielVonEhren 20:45, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi this is Charles from Japan. This is an interesting article, and I dont want to seem too critical, but I think the claim that sushi originated in China is absurd. Someone appears to have done some digging to come up with all these old Chinese characters, but none of it is explained, except that none of them refer to what we know of as sushi - which, as the second part shows, was clearly developed in Japan. The Chinese had nothing to do with the development of sushi, for Pete's sake.

Why can't the Japanese be given credit for their own national dish? Everything here didn't originate in China, you know. Yes, ramen originated in China. Sushi originated in Japan and it's unfair to the Japanese to say otherwise.

Finally, the standard Romanization for ?? is ritsuryô. You're using an outdated system. So, take my adivce and dump the whole first section on China, clean up the romanization, dispense with all the fancy characters that have nothing to do with the subject, and give credit where credit is due.

Hi Charles. You should give yourself an account and sign in. :-)

As to your comment "Take my advice and dump the whole first section...": While your idea might be a little extreme, you should be bold. Go forth and snip away (we can always revert).  :-) :-)

DanielVonEhren 20:59, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have little expertise on the subject, but I have to be critical of this article as well; it's entire point seems to be to claim a Chinese origin for sushi. Sushi refers to a wide range of dishes in Japan, and similarly prepared rice-and-fish dishes have a history in Southern Korea as well (and probably the coastal regions of China). But the most important developments that led to the sushi we know today all took place in Japan--and many of them fairly recently.

The analysis of old Chinese characters often amount to little more than folk etymology, and should be used with caution. Overall, I am suspicious that parts of this article might have been written with a predetermined conclusion and the "everything originates from China" mentality. Perhaps the best solution might be to add that similar dishes were prepared in Japan's coastal neighbours as well, while being careful to pronounce any definite claims that the idea originated in one of those places. --Iceager 00:43, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Transliterations

It would be helpful if articles would provide transliterations of terms in non-Western scripts would provide transliterations. Either Wade-Giles or Pinyin will do - but do indicate which. Septentrionalis 20:00, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi Pmanderson. Can you help with the transliterations? I myself am utterly clueless on Japanese; I could use help with quite a lot of translations, transliterations, and looking-up-of-glyphs. I don't put them in here or elsewhere because I don't have the knowledge.

DanielVonEhren 20:59, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for this interesting article

I ran across this interesting article when I was looking up something else. I was attracted by the claim that sushi originated from China, which I heard for the first time. The only other origin place for sushi that I heard before is Korea.

Firstly, I need to disclose that I am a Chinese. I am having hard time in linking "鮨" with sushi. Could the author clarify his rationale that "鮨" was the early version of sushi? Similarity is not good enough. For example, we can find things similar to hamburg exisiting long time ago in China, but it would be very difficult to argue that hamburg originated from China. To support the Chinese origin claim, evidence of showing that the Japanese actually imported "鮨" and gradually improvised it is needed. There have been all kinds of exchange among Chinese, Koreans and Japanese for thousands of years. The mutual influence is abundant. It would not be surprising to find similarities among things from these countries. Invention never starts from complete scratch.

I look forward to learning more history of sushi, but I couldn’t care for less which people actually invented it.

Hong MA, USA