A fateful trip to Japan, a dearth of cooking skills, and accepting imperfection
Sushi-making dates back hundreds of years, and Japanese chefs treat it as a fine art form. So it was a little brazen for an American twenty-something to boil some rice, spread out a bamboo mat, and see what would happen. Yet this clumsy attempt speaks to an important Japanese concept: “wabi-sabi” (侘び寂び), the acceptance—among other things—that nothing can ever be perfect.
Notes and Miscellanea
- By coincidence, a chance to interview Tetsuya Hanada, creator of Sushi University, popped up while this short was in production.
- The phrase “wabi-sabi” was first encountered in a short story collection by Gen-X writers, but the exact title and author have been difficult to track down.
- The furniture maker George Nakashima integrated this concept into his natural-slab wood tables.
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