From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.
—The Old Man Mad About Drawing
My teacher is the best, he can go days without eating.
No, my teacher is the best, he doesn’t need sleep.
I’m sorry guys but my teacher is more magical than the two of yours put together. He has worked the same job as a sushi chef for seventy-five years. He feels ecstatic all day, never once hated his job. If it is allowed, his ghost will remain at the restaurant watching.
The reason that the Master and the Disciple is often depicted in an Eastern context is because the West and specifically America is anti-mastery. Alan Watts called it The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are but it may as well be the Taboo Against Getting Good At What You Want To Do. It takes a hard goal to motivate yourself into mastering a skill and while you are off fighting plateaus and loving practice for the sake of practice you aren’t buying into the system.
America don’t like that. We gots to keep that graph always pointing upwards because this is a land of instant results. People either flop around falling in love with newness or cause an apocalyptic meltdown trying to push through a dry period. Finally, there is always the option of embracing mediocrity. Mastery is about the internal and eternal commitment to keep climbing even after reaching the top of the mountain.
Everyone who works with Jiro Ono is the best. The food critic who follows him around profiling him in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi is Yamamoto. When Yamamoto says Jiro is the best it is because he has eaten in every sushi, soba, tempura, and eel restaurant in Tokyo. The man who procures their tuna either buys the best tuna at the auction or no tuna. He patiently awaits the crying of the lots, knowing the only fish that is worth the effort.
The shrimp vendor sees a magnificent shrimp and proclaims Ah, this is worthy of Jiro! The eel guy? He is a reincarnation of the God Of Sea Eel. Jiro keeps a sly smile on him at all times. I mean he was one of the oldest men to be awarded a three-star Michelin rating for a restaurant that only has ten seats and a bathroom outside. But boy does Jiro beam when he meets French chef Joël Robuchon, the Chef of the Century. Jiro even hugs him. Winners want to be around other winners.
Sushi wasn’t a question of innate passion. Jiro was thrown out of his house by his parents who really weren’t parents at the age of nine. His drunk of a father told him to make his way and he did so by finding what he loved about what he was forced to do.
Food critic Yamamoto said it was these five attributes that made him successful and these are true for all great chefs.
They take their work seriously
They aspire to improve their skills.
Cleanliness, the restaurant must feel clean.
Impatience, they are not followers and are leaders. They are stubborn
Passion
These are the attributes and the spirit of the shokunin, the artist who is devoted to their work for the work’s sake. They consciously create umani, that flavor feeling of Ahhhhh! The whole is greater than the parts. A cold refreshing beer after a long day’s work and not the Miller lite commercial of ten seconds in the office and then minutes of montaging festive young healthy and slim adults reaching for a cold one.
Jiro hates holidays because it means no work. His eldest son Yoshikazu Ono remarked there is a stranger sleeping in our house. Ono learned much from his father, there is a scene with a vendor….
Vendor: I don’t want to work anymore.
Yoshikazu Ono: I hope you feel better.
Jiro did so much sushi that when he visits his private nocturnal theater he pictures himself still making sushi. When he makes that sushi, he feels victorious. We leave him on the train with his characteristic smile on the way the work but it leaves me wondering how happy the man is. On one hand, he was able to survive an unimaginably rough childhood and relentlessly imposed self-discipline that would have broken most people. He was single-minded enough to pursue his passion above all else and achieved the highest level of success imaginable in his field. An orphan being presented with a Michelin Three Star, the rating meaning that it’s worth going to the country just to eat there. I guess perhaps the question is silly, perhaps it is better to say that Jiro is just an…
Ordinary fellow who has completed his work. .
—Layman Pang
My dad(a chef, who's taught chefs how to make sushi, a woman from Taiwan told other chefs there that he taught her how to make sushi and they didn't believe it given he's an Irishmen funnily enough) told me to watch this a few months ago on a plane ride back from LA. I really liked it, Sushi funnily enough I've only started eating last year, Is up there with Steak and Bread, the latter 2 I'm much better at making. Plain Sushi, a little cold with wasabi under it and soy sauce has been my favorite, coincidentally the way Jiro makes it. It's amazing to see someone solely dedicated to one art form, even if obsessively so. A line that stood out to me was when they went to his parents' graves lighting incense and he says ''I dont know why we do this they didnt take care of me'' and his son now in his 50s himself says "dont say that they'll haunt you" and they stroll out of the graveyard chuckling. I'm glad to know he's still working at almost a century.
well done