KENJI SAKURAI

Sushi master of eight seats, fifty years and one famous tamago, from Tsukiji to Ginza

At four o'clock each morning, Kenji Sakurai was already walking the aisles of Tsukiji fish market, tapping the flank of a tuna with the back of his knuckle and listening for something only he could hear. Born in the fishing port of Choshi, in Chiba, in 1944, the son of a sardine fisherman, he took a train to Tokyo at fifteen with a cardboard suitcase and was taken on as the lowest apprentice at a sushi counter near the market, where for three years he was allowed to do nothing but wash rice and wipe the counter.

He opened his own eight-seat counter, Sushi Sakurai, in a narrow Ginza alley in 1974 and kept it for forty-eight years. There was no menu and no sign, only a small noren curtain and the word omakase, 'I leave it to you,' spoken by guests who soon trusted him with everything. His tamago, a sweet layered omelette, took three hours a day, and regulars, among them a retired judge, a kabuki costume-maker and a nervous young banker who came every first Friday, swore they could taste his patience. He trained eleven apprentices, two of whom now run counters of their own, and was never heard to raise his voice, though he could silence a room by lowering a knife.

He moved his fish orders from Tsukiji to Toyosu when the market relocated in 2018 and grumbled about the car park. He grew morning glories on his balcony, followed the Yomiuri Giants with gentle despair, and closed every Monday to go fishing with his oldest friend, Tanabe. He retired in 2022 when his hands began to tremble, and passed away on 17 February 2023, aged seventy-eight. He leaves his wife, Hisako; his son Takeshi, an engineer at Toyota in Nagoya; his daughter Yumi, a University of Tokyo graduate; and three grandchildren who are learning to make the tamago.

“The rice is the sushi. The fish is only the guest.”