The story of Yohei Hanaya was born in 1799 to a greengrocer’s family in Fukui Prefecture. Yohei Hanaya came home in 1818 after dedicating more than ten years of service to his family’s business. After moving to Tokyo and changing jobs several times, Yohei created his type of sushi called “nigirizuzhi” or nigri, most commonly known as n(squeezed) sushi, and started selling it by carrying a box of it on his back.

Nigri is a type of sushi consisting of a small ball of rice topped with wasabi sauce and raw fish or other seafood. Emerged in the 1800s during the Edo period.

Narezushi, the original form of sushi, has been made in Southeast Asia.

8 billion sheets of Nori have been produced all over Japan, but more than half of it comes from the Aritake Sea. Seaweed has also affected the natural environment, seaweed farms can reduce the amount of light that reaches the seafloor beneath them and could make it challenging for other photo synthetic organisms like seagrass to grow.

Wasabi is a root vegetable that is found in Japan and is very difficult to grow due to the specific climate it needs. There has been a wasabi shortage in Japan, with just 1,384 tons produced in 2023- just 30% of the 4,600 tons produced in 2005. Combined with the declining rate of wasbi farmers.

Soy sauce originated in China, but Chinese and Japanese soy sauce tastes and used differntly. Shodoshima has 400 years of soy sauce production, and there are about a dozen soy sauce producers. Soy production generates greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Rice vinegar originated in China and became known in Japan during the 4th- 5th centuries- a staple for making Japanese sushi rice. The amount of water used for the cultivation of rice can lead to water scarcity in regions where rice is grown.

Rice: The rice used in sushi is grown in Japan, but there has been a rice shortage due to tourists eating all the rice balls and convenient store foods due the it being popular on social media. This has led to a massive shortage of rice in Japan, and now citizens of Japan have led to eating pre-packaged rice and rice imported from the nations. There has been a climate change in the rice environment, plus the rice plants are degrading and changing the ecosystem.

There are several reasons why the avocado's environmental impact is detrimental to the planet, such as how these monoculture crops draw nutrients from surrounding soil, compromise a region's water supply with several litres of water needed to grow avocados, soil degradation, soil erosion, and more.

The export of avocados has supported farmers' livelihoods and created jobs in packing facilities, transportation, and marketing. This growth, increased investment in avocado orchards, infrastructure, and technology, further stimulating economic activity in rural areas, including Japan.

Since the expansion of the sushi industry all over the world, there have been cases of overfishing. The high demand for fish has led to fish being caught at a faster rate than they can reproduce. This issue has been a problem for the sushi industry and species such as bluefin tuna, salmon, and eel are in high demand in the sushi industry.

This affects farmers and the sushi industry. Now, people in Japan are starting to eat less fish due to fish being over-farmed.