KAITAI: WHEN FISH AND KNIVES BECOME ART

My favourite things in the world are fish, culinary delights, and art. And I’ve never seen anything combine them better than Kaitai.

Kaitai (解体) is a Japanese term for “dismantiling”, “disassemly” or “demboilization”. However, when used next to a 200-pound bluefin tuna, it becomes a perfomance, an art where each cut is deliberate.

Kaitai refers to the specialized process of breaking down a whole tuna, It requires so much knowledge of fish anatomy, specialized knives and how to make precise cuts to preserve the qualty of each piece of soon-to-be sashimi.

I will be forever impressed by how each cut of the tuna is rationed: from fat distribution affecting the softness of each slice to how thick the muscle would be cut so its not too chewy and how to maximize the flavour and texture in each bite.

The knife is the pen and the fish is the canvas. The knife is the prop and the fish is the stage. Kaitai is the performance or brushstrokes. It’s not just interesting because of what the tuna becomes, but because of how the movements of cutting the fish becomes intuitive, like a dance choreography, and much like one, there is an audience and a performer.

However, the art doesn’t end once the performance does. There is the after of the presentation of the tuna, and the understanding of the whole process. Every inch of the tuna has its own culinary uses, even the bones.

Even the history is nuanced: Japanese fish butchery, knife craftsmanship, sushi culture, kaitai, and modern kaitai shō are constantly blended together as fi they developed as one continuous artistic tradition.

It is beautiful becasue of ephemerality. The immediate requirement to make the decision to cut the tuna a certain way, as soon as the knife passes through, there is no going back.