Witnesses of History program
BBC World Service
A man from the Norwegian Arctic, who had a deep love for Japan, came up with an idea in 1986 that would change the way sushi was made and eaten around the world.
The Norwegian salmon industry was booming at the time, but it needed to expand into new markets.
The government launched Project Japan to increase fish exports to a country known for its love of seafood.
However, there was a serious problem - the Japanese did not eat raw salmon.
Bjorn Eirik Olsen, a young Norwegian who was fascinated by Japan, was hired to analyze the market.
He developed a passion for Japanese culture at the age of 12, when he watched Akira Kurosawa's cult film Seven Samurai.
"I was completely captivated by that film and at that moment I decided I wanted to be like them," Bjorn Eirik tells the BBC World Service.
Because of this interest, he went to Osaka, a large Japanese city southwest of the capital Tokyo, where he studied the language, and then to Kyushu University in Fukuoka, where he studied the production and use of seaweed.
The original idea of Project Japan was to find a new market for capelin, shrimp, roach and herring.
By the end of the 1980s, the Norwegian salmon farming industry was growing rapidly and it became clear to Bjorn-Eirik that this fish had enormous potential.
"I saw that the most interesting segment of the Japanese market was the sushi and sashimi market, which was dominated by extremely expensive seafood, such as Atlantic bluefin tuna, sea bream and various types of shellfish," he tells the BBC World Service.
Fish served raw in sushi and sashimi could fetch up to ten times the price of fish intended for cooking.
If Norwegian salmon were to succeed in breaking into that market segment, it would be revolutionary.
However, there was a major obstacle.
'It smells like a river'
"When we first introduced salmon for sushi and sashimi to wholesalers and importers in the industry, they said, 'No, we Japanese don't eat raw salmon,'" recalls Bjorn Eirik.
"They thought it smelled like the river, didn't have a good texture, and wasn't red enough."
Additionally, in Japan, it was believed that wild Pacific salmon carried a risk of parasites, and that farmed Atlantic salmon was of poorer quality.
'Norwegian salmon' (Norwegian salmon)
In an attempt to change this attitude, Bjorn Eirik and his team came up with a new name for their product.
They avoided the Japanese word for salmon, "shake", and instead used the name "Noruee saamon", which means "Norwegian salmon" in Japanese.
They then launched marketing campaigns and collaborations with top chefs, including Yukata Ishinabe, the star of an extremely popular television cooking show.
Despite all efforts, progress was slow.
And then the crisis struck.
In the early 1990s, farmed salmon production in Norway grew much faster than demand in the European and United States (US) markets, leaving as many as 37.500 tons of salmon in freezers, unsold.
Prices plummeted, and half of the country's fish farms faced bankruptcy.
"There was a real danger that the entire salmon industry would go bankrupt," says Bjorn Eirik.
In a desperate attempt to clear stocks, Norwegian exporters were considering selling 12.000 tonnes of salmon to one of Japan's largest seafood companies for traditional cooking purposes, not sushi, he added.
"If you allow this, you will destroy everything we have done to build a new brand of Norwegian salmon for sushi and sashimi," he told officials at the time.
He managed to reach an agreement with a Japanese company Nichirei about purchasing 5.000 tons of salmon and marketing it as sushi salmon.
Sushi on the 'conveyor belt'
However, another event had an even greater influence on the Japanese eventually embracing raw salmon.
After a decade of rapid growth, Japan's economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, leading to a surge in the popularity of more affordable sushi restaurants where this specialty is served on a conveyor belt (kaiten-zushi).
"As the fish circle on the conveyor belt, children can simply grab whatever they like."
"The children didn't have a negative attitude towards salmon, so when they saw this orange or golden fish passing by, they would take it and they liked it a lot," says Bjorn Eirik.
"Within a few years, the popularity of Norwegian salmon exploded thanks to this new way of dining."
When his engagement in promoting Norwegian salmon for sushi ended in 1994, Bjorn Eirik left Tokyo and returned to Norway.
He hoped that salmon sushi had found a place on Japanese menus, but he wasn't entirely sure.
However, when he visited Japan a year later, he noticed plastic models of traditional Japanese salmon nigiri sushi in the window of a sushi shop, where plastic replicas of all the dishes served are traditionally displayed.
It was a clear sign that salmon sushi had truly taken off.
"That's when I realized that a real breakthrough had been made, because even the factories that make those plastic imitation sushi are now producing salmon nigiri," says Bjorn Eirik.
Salmon is now one of the most popular sushi additions around the world.
Norway remains the world's largest producer of farmed salmon, although questions are increasingly being raised about the environmental consequences of this industry and its impact on wild fish populations.
Bjorn Eirik still regularly visits his beloved Japan and is writing a book about his mission to convince the Japanese to embrace salmon sushi, which was as personal as it was professional.
"I'm extremely happy to see Japanese culture merging with a part of Norwegian," he says.
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