Japanese Miniatures: One Rice Sushi

The Japanese have a natural pull towards miniaturisation that never seizes to inspire our investigation into smallerness. Our series on Japanese Miniatures zooms in on this special quality. It articulates a sensitivity for smallness that, through a process of abstraction, may ultimately help us attain a desire to downsize ourselves.

Sushi itself already attests to this desire but chef Hironori Ikeno took it to its logical extreme by letting the size of one of its key components determine its ultimate logical size: the one rice sushi. The other extreme, a very large sushi, has also been tried, and is defined by the strength of the nori sheets and the muscle power of the chefs that have to roll it into shape. While the ultimate small sushi manifests shrink-desire itself, the giant sushi role gives us a sense of the overwhelming abundance we would experience if we would become smaller.