41 -”Do Sushi Chefs Need a License? What Really Proves Their Skill.”
Guests often ask me a simple, honest question:
“Do you need some kind of official license to be a sushi chef?”
The short answer is: no, there is no special national license just for sushi chefs in Japan.
There is a general qualification called a “chōrishi” (cook’s license), which applies to all kinds of cooks. But even that is not legally required to open or run a restaurant.
From a regulatory point of view, the government cares far more about whether the kitchen and equipment are hygienic and safe than about whether the chef holds a particular piece of paper.
So if there is no mandatory license,
what actually tells you whether a sushi chef is trustworthy?
For me, the answer begins long before I ever opened my own class—
with the crisis that was happening inside the sushi world.
（→Foudner’s Story 42-
A Broken Way of Training Sushi Chefs)