Japanese Traditions, Food Industry Tainted by Widespread Poisonings

The sushi knives were sharpened, the wooden counter was immaculate, and the glistening slabs of fish were arrayed with an artful eye for color. But sushi chef Hirofumi Gusoku stood glumly in an empty restaurant watching his expensive delicacies slowly spoil.

The worst food poisoning outbreak in more than a decade has made the Japanese lose their appetite for sushi, even though there is no evidence to indict Japan’s trademark cuisine.

Two months after the epidemic began, Japanese authorities have not found the source of the virulent strain of bacteria that has killed at least seven people and sickened more than 8,500 nationwide. Most of the victims are children believed poisoned by an unidentified ingredient in their school lunches.

The city of Sakai, next door to Osaka, has been hardest hit, with more than 6,400 cases in a population of 800,000. But isolated victims of food poisoning caused by the same type of E. coli bacteria, called 0157, have now been reported in nearly every region of Japan.

The recent deaths of a 10-year-old girl from Sakai and an 85-year-old woman from Osaka have frightened the public and renewed criticism of a government that is seen as slow to help its citizens in times of crisis.

“They started to act only when this became a really huge epidemic,” said Mayumi Ishikawa, 30, a Sakai mother who is now thoroughly cooking every mouthful of food she gives her two children. “They should have told us earlier how dangerous this 0157 is. [Officials] knew about it, but they treated it very lightly.”

The influential Asahi newspaper lambasted bureaucrats, doctors and local officials for failing to move faster to contain the epidemic. It compared the slow reaction to the food poisoning crisis to the “frighteningly insensitive” official response to the victims of last year’s Kobe earthquake.

Even after the deaths of two 6-year-olds in Okayama prefecture in June, the Sakai school board ignored orders from the Osaka regional board of education to serve only cooked foods for its school lunches. Investigators have scrutinized more than 1,000 lunch samples and have failed to pinpoint the food culprit.

Health and Welfare Minister Naoto Kan, one of Japan’s most outspoken politicians, admitted that he had misjudged the severity of the outbreak. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto called an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss countermeasures and promised the city of Sakai $231 million to help treat victims.

On Friday, Kan joined Education Minister Mikio Okuda and the chief government spokesman in a joint news conference to apologize for the outbreak.

“There’s no established view, even among medical experts,” about how to respond, Kan said. “At the moment, we still lack enough data to establish a unified policy. I apologize for the worries that this has caused the Japanese people.”

The 0157 bacteria has already shaken Japan’s food processing industries. Tighter meat-processing standards and other heightened sanitary controls are expected. Japanese have for centuries relished raw foods that make Westerners squirm. But skittish consumers were shunning not only sashimi, the surgically carved slices of raw fish or meat, but also salad, fruit, vegetables and eggs. Even the prized, famously pricey Japanese melons were languishing on the shelf.

The Daiei supermarket chain halted sales of raw horse meat, beef liver and other meat sashimi in all 360 stores nationwide. Other supermarkets put up signs urging customers to cook all meat. Meat sales have reportedly dropped 10% compared to the same period last year, and fish prices plunged at the Osaka Central Market.

“I feel sorry for the poor sushi chefs, but I just don’t feel like eating it,” Ishikawa said.

Gusoku, owner of Hirasushi, a popular Sakai sushi bar, said, “We think our sushi is fine, but on TV they’re telling people not to eat anything raw.”

The warnings have finally hit home: On Wednesday night, his only customers were four fellow restaurant owners.

While happily devouring Gusoku’s spurned sushi, they diluted their sorrows with local beer, commiserated about the dearth of customers, defended the quality of their own food and speculated on whether the slice of 0157-laden raw liver that is known to have made one little boy sick had come from a piece of imported beef.

At last, Gusoku announced that he was closing the sushi bar early and going home to bed. He said he would like to take a vacation until the 0157 scare is over, but he doesn’t dare.

“If we close, people will think something bad happened here,” he said.

If restaurant patrons were scarce, there was no shortage of customers at Sakai Municipal Hospital, where the waiting room was full of worried-looking parents and subdued children.

Tatsuya Kai, 30, rushed his three children in for a second checkup after hearing that the 10-year-old girl who died Tuesday had suffered nosebleeds. Kai’s 5-year-old daughter had a bloody nose earlier this week, and her 7-year-old brother has had blood in his stool.

When the boy was first taken to the doctor last week, he was told he had a cold and given an antibiotic, Kai said. The “cold” turned out to be 0157.

Other 0157 patients have also been misdiagnosed as having appendicitis, stomach flu and assorted other ailments.

An 84-year-old woman from Kanagawa prefecture who became ill with 0157 poisoning on July 1 underwent abdominal surgery three days later, according to a Health and Welfare Ministry report.

She died July 7.

In the past few days, Sakai officials have plastered leaflets about prevention and symptoms of 0157 across the city, and that has prompted a new wave of people seeking reassurance or treatment.

The 0157 bacteria is unusually contagious and has infected relatives of some afflicted children. To check the spread, Sakai officials have been visiting victims’ homes to talk about good hygiene and handing out disinfectant.

Swimming pools have been shut, and most parents kept their children indoors as temperatures soared into the 90s.

Parks and playgrounds were deserted, although children are on summer vacation. Day-care centers are still functioning, but they have taken special sanitary precautions, including banning cloth diapers and requiring parents to buy expensive disposables.

Kai said some Sakai residents wonder whether the food poisoning could be the work of Aum Supreme Truth, the cult accused of releasing poisonous sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo subway system last year, or of another terrorist group.

“I don’t believe it . . . but you cannot say the possibility is zero,” he said.

The 0157 bacteria is the same strain that struck the American West in 1993, killing four people and making about 500 sick.

The Japanese government said Friday that it has contacted U.S. officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, for advice on treating the bacteria.

By the end of the week, the pace of new infections in Sakai had eased, and the number of people listed in serious condition had dropped to 62, down from 101 earlier in the week. But more than 20 patients remained strapped to dialysis machines, and two girls, ages 7 and 12, were in a coma and on life-support systems.

“It’s just so sad, it’s unbearable,” Kai said. “If one of my children died, I would never forgive them. But whom I would not forgive, and for what, I don’t know.”