Japan’s sushi legend Jiro Ono turns 100 and is not ready for retirement
Tokyo, Oct 27: Japanese sushi legend Jiro Ono won three Michelin stars for more than a decade, the world’s oldest head chef to do so. He has served the world’s dignitaries and his art of sushi was featured in an award-winning film.
After all these achievements and at the age of 100, he is not ready to fully retire.
“I plan to keep going for about five more years,” Ono said last month as he marked Japan’s “Respect for the Aged Day” with a gift and a certificate ahead of his birthday.
What’s the secret of his health? “To work,” Ono replied to the question by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, who congratulated him. “I can no longer come to the restaurant every day … but even at 100, I try to work if possible. I believe the best medicine is to work.” Ono, the founder of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny, 10-seat sushi bar in the basement of a building in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district, turned 100 on Monday.
Seeking perfection
In one of the world’s fastest-aging countries, he is now among Japan’s nearly 100,000 centenarians, according to government statistics.
Born in the central Japanese city of Hamamatsu in 1925, Ono began his apprenticeship at age 7 at the Japanese restaurant of a local inn. He moved to Tokyo and became a sushi chef at 25 and opened his own restaurant – Sukiyabashi Jiro – 15 years later in 1965.
He has devoted his life seeking perfection in making sushi.
“I haven’t reached perfection yet,” Ono, then 85, said in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a film released in 2012. “I’ll continue to climb trying to reach the top but nobody knows where the top is.”
Ono is devoted to what he serves to his regular clients, even turning down the Japanese government when it called to make a reservation for then-US President Barack Obama and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2014.
Ono’s restaurant earned three Michelin stars in 2007, as he became the first sushi chef to do so, and has kept the status until 2019, when he was recognised by the Guinness World Records as the oldest head chef of a three-Michelin-star restaurant, at age 93 years and 128 days. (AP)
