Why Did One of Japan’s Longest-Lived Audio Companies Start Making Sushi Robots?
The untold history of Audio-Technica sushi makers, now sold in over 50 countries
by Wataru Tsuchiya
When Japanese people ask their foreign friends what comes to mind when they think of Japanese food, almost everyone answers “sushi.” Many foreigners seem to think Japanese eat the famous raw fish cuisine every day of their lives, but that’s actually a huge misunderstanding. The average Japanese person doesn’t eat sushi even once a week, and sushi actually came into the world as a culinary luxury, prepared by seasoned chefs with advanced artisanal skills. Because of this pedigree, sushi in Japan is typically only eaten at celebrations or memorials.
Nonetheless, there are kinds of sushi that fall outside this high-end provenance, including kaiten-zushi (sushi-go-round) and the budget-friendly types of sushi sold in supermarkets and izakaya (Japanese tapas bars). In recent years the quality of these cheap sushis has improved significantly, and budget sushi has developed a reputation for excellent flavor.
But why did quality, low-cost sushi suddenly become a possibility? Contrary to popular belief, the answer has nothing to do with people outside the guilds of seasoned sushi chefs starting to make it on their own. Pull back the curtain on sushi’s shift towards the mainstream, and what you’ll find are “sushi maker robots.”
And behind most of the robots, surprisingly, you’ll find the Audio-Technica Corporation, a world-renowned Japanese manufacturer of sound equipment. The audio company makes and markets “Sushi Maker,” an automatic “sushi robot” currently used in over fifty countries worldwide. Among makers of shari-tama (sushi rice ball) rolling machines, Audio-Technica currently boasts the second largest worldwide market share. We sat down with Yoko Nakahira, a developer of Audio-Technica’s sushi robots, to find out why the world-class audio maker suddenly branched out into sushi tech.
“Sushi and…Robots?!”
Founded in 1962, Audio-Technica was long known as the developer, manufacturer, and marketer of LP record cartridges, but with the digital music revolution, the company suddenly found itself backed into a corner. As LPs gave way to CDs, digital music began to seem as inevitable as the passage of time, and Audio-Technica started searching for ways to diversify its business. It was around this time that the company began pouring energy into the headphones and microphones that are now their flagship products, but they knew they would need other products as well. In pursuit of new ventures, the company decided to solicit ideas from its employees. For whatever reason, one of the ideas that came forward was “sushi maker.”
In 1984, Audio-Technica released “Nigirikko,” the world’s first automatic sushi maker. By pouring vinegared rice into the top of the machine and turning a crank on its side, the user could mold sushi rice into shari and deposit it on a rotating plate that looked and moved just like a turntable. The novelty of the machine, which allowed any user to make sushi rice simply and easily, caused a huge stir as soon as the machine came out. The machines flew off the shelves as soon as they hit stores.
Nigirikko, however, had been designed for home use. As sales continued to rise, Audio-Technica found itself besieged by voices demanding to know “when the industrial-use model is coming out!” The development team got to work automating Nigirikko’s shari mechanisms, and before long they’d made a robot that could roll 900 shari-tama in an hour. This was the beginning of Audio-Technica’s foray into industrial-use sushi robotics.
Sushi Robots Take the World Stage
Today, Audio-Technica’s sushi robots are used not just in Japan, but in over 50 countries around the world. According to the company, some customers were so stunned by their trade show demonstrations that they bought machines on the spot and decided to open their own sushi restaurant.
“People really get excited when they try out our sushi robots — everybody takes videos of us. There have even been people who’ve watched demonstrations and immediately said ‘this is amazing!’ and rushed off to start their own sushi restaurants. Depending on the country, I guess it must be easy to make money by starting sushi places.”
Overseas demand for sushi has been on the rise for some time, but according to Nakahira, Audio-Technica has faced all kinds of challenges in expanding sushi robot sales overseas. Every country, it seems, has different expectations when it hears the word “sushi.”
“It’s not enough to just export Japanese norms around the world. Depending on the place, people have different preferences about the firmness and size of the shari-tama. There have also been a lot of customers who have a very strong image of sushi as a health food, and who have requested machines that can make sushi with brown rice.”
On top of that, even the essential ingredients of sushi rice — vinegar, water, and the rice itself — vary from country to country. In response to these differences in taste, Nakahira explains, Audio-Techncia made subtle adjustments to the regional models for each robot. From the shape of the rollers inside the machine to the materials used to make them, from the speed of the mechanism to the programs that operate it, the company performed careful modifications on every model that rolled off its line. In this almost obsessive care over fine-tuning, we catch a glimpse of the pride Audio-Technica takes in helping each country make sushi suited to its palate.
“ASM730,”a “vinegar mixing machine” designed to prepare sushi rice for shari. Its headphone-shaped design shows Audio-Technica’s distinctive sense of humor(Courtesy of Audio Technica Corporation)
“We Have Data on Sushi Rolling”
As mentioned above, Japanese sushi began itself as a culinary delicacy prepared by highly trained chefs who go through years of training to learn how to roll and make high-quality sushi. This training refines the chefs’ sensitivity to things like the amount of air molded into the rice, which makes a huge difference for the quality of the shari. Shari should be limpid, but not so loose it falls apart — only through experience repeatedly walking this culinary tightrope do chefs learn to sense and judge how to make sushi. On top of that, chefs develop an intuitive sense of when to make adjustments to the vinegar and water, judging purely based on the way the rice feels in their hands. Everything, in classic sushi, depends on the refined sensibility of a skilled chef.
Given that history, how can a robot know how to make good shari? Nakahira describes Audio-Technica’s data-driven, scientific approach to sushi making.
“We could try to compare just by eating what the machines produce, but that doesn’t always get things quite right. Instead, we try to make the best shari we can by comparing the data we gather from machines on the size, weight, shape, and stickiness of the sushi rice.”
Audio-Technica has developed its own measuring devices to calculate the firmness of the rice its machines make, and it maintains a library of “shari data.” If sushi chefs rely on experience and sensory intuition to roll their sushi, you could say Audio-Technica robots rely on shari data. But Nakahira insists the final adjustments are never decided by the data alone.
“As a final step, we do a taste test and let people decide. We’ll hold a big sushi party where we ask people who work in other divisions of the company to come and give us their opinions.”
But what can a chef do that a sushi robot can’t? By the same token, what can a sushi robot do that a chef can’t? Nakahira explains the differences like this:
“Originally, the size and shape of shari would change depending on the feel of the stuff used to make it. A robot can’t sense those kinds of distinctions, nor can it make fine adjustments based on how the rice feels in its ‘hands.’ But when it comes to uniformity and production speed, machines are superior to human chefs by pretty much every standard. They can also keep working for long periods without complaining!”
“I Wanted to Make Sushi Robots, So…”
As the company name suggests, most people who come to work at Audio-Technica come because they dream of working with audio technology. In the last thirty years, only one student has joined the company’s ranks because she “wanted to make sushi robots.” That student was Nakahira, and she came to the company after studying production engineering in college.
“I’ve always loved machines, and I’ve always loved to eat. So when I was looking for a job, I studied the Audio-Technica homepage. When I saw a sushi robot there, I was completely won over.”
At the time, the company had no plans to employ any culinary manufacturing technicians, but “all of a sudden, there was this weird student applying to work on sushi robots.” Word of Nakahira’s application got out within Audio-Technica, and the company decided to hire her. She had passion and obvious technical skill, and within a year she was making recommendations to her boss for a new sushi robot that could roll onigiri (rice balls sold as snacks in convenience stores). “I thought it was impossible,” he said, “but if we give it a try?…”
Nakahira had been given her chance.
“I worked the onigiri robot into gaps in the production schedule, and we managed to turn it into a mass-production item. Before it was released, we had the old ladies who make prepared foods at supermarkets test them out for us. They’d had so much trouble making onigiri up to that time that they were really happy to work with it. When it was time for us to take the machines back, they pleaded with us, ‘don’t take them away!’ It was a really rewarding experience all around.”
Today, as mentioned above, Nakahira is part of the sushi robot development team at Audio-Technica, and she spends her days exploring new possibilities for sushi robotics. The girl who “loved machines and loved to eat” has grown up to help spread one of Japan’s most distinctive food cultures around the world. Go to any sushi bar or restaurant and sneak a peek at the kitchen; chances are you’ll find one of Audio-Technica’s sushi robots inside. That fact is a tribute to all the ingenuity and skill Nakahira and her team put into their work.
(photo: Daisuke Hayata translation: Jay Walker)
Originally published at ignition.co.
