When Norway introduced salmon sushi to Japan

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the late 1980s, Norway needed a new market for its growing farmed salmon production.

Fish-loving Japan and its lucrative sushi market seemed to fit the bill. But salmon was one fish the Japanese did not eat raw.

Lars Bevanger speaks to Bjørn-Eirik Olsen, the man who came up with the idea of putting salmon on sushi rice, and who spent years convincing the Japanese to eat it.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo:Bjørn-Eirik Olsen in Japan. Credit: Bjørn-Eirik Olsen)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:10.6	Hello, welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Lash Bevanger.
0:17.7	Today I'm taking you back to 1986, when a man from the Arctic north of Norway with a profound
0:24.2	love of Japan had an idea that would transform how the world eats sushi.
0:34.9	The 1954 film The Seventh Samurai opened Björn Eryk Olsen's eyes to Japan and its culture when he was very young.
0:44.6	In my hometown, we didn't have television before in 1967. I was 12 and the first movie I saw was the Seven Sabarai.
0:54.7	And I was completely taken by that film.
0:58.8	And I decided at that moment that I want to be like them in a way.
1:04.9	Bjorn Eriks' interest in all things Japanese led him to move to Osaka, Japan's third city, to learn the language. Then he studied
1:13.1	the production and use of seaweed at the Kyushu University in Fukuoka. By 1986, this had made
1:21.5	him the perfect candidate when the Norwegian government needed a market analyst for its project Japan,
1:28.7	an attempt to turn fish-loving Japan into a big new market for Norwegian fish.
1:37.1	The main reason for starting this project Japan, as it was called,
1:41.1	was the cappelin, shrimp, redfish and herring.
1:46.2	But by the late 1980s, Norway's salmon farming industry was growing rapidly
1:51.3	and it became clear in Bjorn Eriks' mind that this fish had huge potential.
1:57.0	I could see that the most interesting segment of the Japanese market
2:00.7	was the sushi and sashimi market,
2:02.8	dominated by very valuable seafood such as tuna, bluefin tuna, and sea bream and various kinds of shellfish.
2:12.3	Fish used raw in sushi and sashimi would fetch up to 10 times more than when sold for cooking.
2:19.5	There was only one problem.
2:22.7	The Japanese didn't eat salmon raw.
	...

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