Norway's Project Japan talked raw salmon into sushi and built a global craving

In 1980 Norway exported just 2 tonnes of salmon to Japan. Japan loved sushi but barely ate salmon raw: the local chum salmon was a fish for grilling, and raw salmon was widely thought to carry parasites. Meanwhile Norway's coastal farms were producing oceans of Atlantic salmon with nowhere new to go.

In 1985 a delegation led by Thor Listau, Norway's former Minister of Fisheries, travelled to Tokyo on what became the Norwegian Seafood Council's 'Project Japan'. The team, including market-strategy head Bjørn Eirik Olsen, experimented with salmon in sushi and served it to importers, restaurants and at dinner parties at the Norwegian Embassy. Japan's sushi boom had outgrown its tuna supply, so salmon had a slot to fill — but the initiative was not immediately successful and took years of patient promotion.

The long game paid off: twenty years after the 2-tonne start, Norway was exporting more than 45,000 tonnes of salmon to Japan annually. Japanese chefs came to prize farmed Norwegian salmon for raw eating, and the craving spread outward — today an estimated 30% of Norwegian salmon ends up as sushi, and the fish is a staple everywhere from conveyor-belt chains to Ginza counters.

Enter the market inside its signature dish

It sold the dish, not the fish: sushi was the trusted format for raw fish in Japan, so placing salmon inside it attacked the taboo at exactly the right point.

Farmed Atlantic salmon met the safety bar that wild raw salmon failed — no parasites — which made the pitch credible rather than exotic.

Japan's tuna shortfall opened the door: the most popular sushi topping needed a rich, year-round substitute, and fatty farmed salmon fit.

The campaign was patient — embassy dinners and importer tastings for years — because habit change in food outlasts any one sales visit.

A prestige loop formed: once Japan's own sushi masters served it, global sushi culture followed and marketed Norwegian salmon for free.

To open a market, adopt the customer's format rather than making them adopt yours. Norway sold a dish, not a fish — the dish carried the fish, and a third of Norwegian salmon is now eaten raw.

Norway's salmon exports to Japan topped 45,000 tonnes a year by 2000 and stood around 34,000 tonnes in 2019. Salmon has ranked as the most favoured sushi topping in Maruha Nichiro's annual conveyor-belt sushi survey for nine years running, and shops at Tokyo's Toyosu market that once refused salmon now advertise it — Iwasa-zushi famously turned asking customers away, then added salmon sushi to its menu.