Sushi is defined by the rice, not the fish. Any dish using vinegared sushi rice is sushi, with or without seafood. Maki is one form of it — rolled, usually in seaweed, then sliced. All maki is sushi; a great deal of sushi is not maki.
The core difference
- sushi — any dish built on vinegared rice. The rice is the definition.
- maki — sushi rolled into a cylinder and cut. From makizushi, rolled sushi.
The rice is the point
This is the most common misunderstanding: sushi does not mean raw fish. Raw fish served alone, without rice, is sashimi and is not sushi at all. A cucumber roll with no seafood in it is sushi. The word refers to the seasoned rice — su means vinegar.
The main forms
- Nigiri — a hand-pressed finger of rice with a topping laid over it.
- Maki — rolled and sliced. Subdivides further: hosomaki thin with one filling, futomaki thick with several, uramaki inside-out with the rice outside the seaweed.
- Temaki — a hand-rolled cone, eaten immediately before the seaweed softens.
- Chirashi — a bowl of rice scattered with toppings.
- Inari — rice stuffed into sweet fried tofu pouches.
The California roll is a real thing, just not Japanese
Uramaki — rice on the outside — was developed in North America, generally credited to chefs in Los Angeles or Vancouver in the 1960s and 1970s, partly because diners were unenthusiastic about a visible wrapper of seaweed. It then travelled back to Japan. It is a genuine style with a documented origin rather than a corruption.
Where sushi came from
The dish began as preservation. Narezushi packed fish in fermenting rice for months; the rice was discarded and the fish eaten. Vinegar later replaced fermentation, which cut the wait to hours, and in nineteenth-century Edo the modern fast-served nigiri appeared as street food.
The pronunciation of the endings
Sushi becomes zushi in compounds — makizushi, inarizushi — through a regular sound change in Japanese called rendaku, where the first consonant of a second element voices. It is the same process that gives hon plus tana the form hondana.
