Last night we had dinner at our son’s home. It was our youngest granddaughter’s fifth birthday. There had been a party with friends the day before. There were crafts and games and a piñata. Our grandchildren and their friends made sundaes with their choice of several different flavors of ice cream. The party was small - just the right size in the opinion of the grandparents. Yesterday, however, was the actual day of her birthday and the day for a family celebration. It was a typical school day, with the three oldest children going off to their classes. The five-year-old attends jumpstart preschool and rides a bus from the school where her siblings go to school to the preschool in a nearby town. Their father was able to leave work a bit early and come home for the birthday celebration.

Like the family where I grew up, in their family the child whose birthday is being celebrated is asked to suggest the main dish for the birthday dinner. I don’t remember what I suggested when I was growing up, but my birthday is in the summer, so I suspect that I often suggested campfire food such as hot dogs or hamburgers. I know that when I was a teenager, I frequently requested fried chicken for my birthday dinner.

I know that none of my brothers or sisters or I ever asked for sushi for our birthday dinner. Times have changed. We had a feast of sushi for dinner last night at the request of the five-year-old, who, along with the whole family, was enjoying the food picked up from a carryout restaurant by her father. He knows that the sushi was freshly prepared because although he had placed an online order, he had to wait while they prepared the order in front of him.

I commented to the family about how exotic it seemed to me as a kid from Montana to have a granddaughter who requested sushi for her birthday dinner.

We definitely eat more sushi since we have moved to the coast. There are several vendors, including the sushi place right at the entrance to Birch Bay State Park, just a little over a mile from our house, who prepare sushi with fresh, local fish. It is simply better than what we were able to obtain in South Dakota, even though there were some good restaurants that prepared sushi there. In the midwest at least part of the fish that is used is frozen and flown in from the coasts. I’m sure that the sushi restaurants around here use some prepared and frozen products in their food, but you can count on fresh salmon in several different varieties to be a featured part of your order.

We think of Sushi as a Japanese food. Both of our children participated in student exchanges in Japan during their high school years and we hosted several Japanese exchange students, including one who lived with our family for a full year. Our daughter lived in Japan for five years and we were able to visit her there twice. Sushi, however, didn’t originate in Japan. It made its way to those islands from the mainland, from China and Korea and other places. Many years ago, sushi didn’t feature fresh fish, but often pickled or fermented fish. All of that was before the particular type of rice was developed that can be cooked into a sticky form that makes good rolls. It was before a paper company developed a way of processing sheets of seaweed that can be used to create rolls of food. It was before the post-World War II restructuring of the Japanese Economy made Japan famous for high quality steel knives.

It was also before True World Group was formed and grew to a conglomerate that specializes in providing fresh fish to high-end sushi restaurants had revenues exceeding $500 million per year.

The story of sushi in America and its popularity from ballparks to street vendors to grocery chain sushi bars is one of an intriguing one. It involves the complex dynamics of succession in the Unification Church, sometimes called the Moonies after its founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The story of the Unification Church and its rising from a small cult to a worldwide religion in a few short decades is itself quite a tale. It involves Korean leader who recruited followers in Japan and convinced them to come to the United States to help spread his religion. It involves mass weddings in which the immigration status of those recruits was insured. It also involves the founding of True World Group, originally a company whose profits was dedicated to the support of the church. You could say we have the Moonies to thank for the popularity of sushi in the United States today. The New York Times prepared a special report on the relationship of sushi and the Unification church. You can read about it at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/05/magazine/sushi-us.html

Our granddaughter isn’t aware of any of those complexities. She is not a member of the Unification Church. And we don’t really know how much of the ingredients in our family birthday dinner came from True World Foods. For us it was a fun evening of eating with chop sticks, enjoying fresh fish and foods that are fairly exotic even for those of us who live near the ocean. About the only fermented food on the table was the pickled ginger, which was very good. I did notice that the five-year-old didn’t eat the ginger. She was especially fond of vegetable rolls with a bit of cream cheese. I enjoyed the shrimp and salmon rolls a bit of spicy mayonnaise and some wasabi on the side.

As I drifted off to sleep last night, I couldn’t help but think of my parents and grandparents. I think they would have been surprised at the menu of our birthday celebration. I doubt if my grandparents ever ate sushi. My parents did, but it was a rare treat, reserved for trips to distant cities. Times have changed. Our family continues to drift from generation to generation.

I can only wonder what will be served at birthday dinners when our grandchildren have become grandparents.