Sushi · Ingredients

Shun: the seasons of the sushi counter

June 2026 · 7 min read

There’s a word that governs everything at a Japanese counter: shun (旬), the narrow window when an ingredient is at its absolute peak. Eating with the seasons isn’t a marketing line here — it’s the whole grammar of the cuisine. A great chef’s menu in April and the same chef’s menu in December are almost different restaurants.

The Japanese even split a season three ways: hashiri (走り), the first, prized early arrivals; shun, the peak; and nagori (名残), the wistful last of it before it’s gone for a year. Read that way, a counter is really a calendar. Here’s the year in its most symbolic ingredients.

Spring (春)

Spring is the awakening — light, fragrant, often named for the cherry blossom.

Sakura-dai — sea bream (madai) at its spawning best, the skin flushed pink: the “cherry-blossom bream.”
Hotaru-ika — firefly squid from Toyama, whose spring shoals light the bay at night.
Sayori — halfbeak, slim and silver, a classic spring hikarimono.
Torigai, mirugai, aoyagi — the spring shellfish, sweet and crunching.
Sawara — Spanish mackerel, whose kanji (鰆) literally carries the character for spring.
Sakura-ebi — tiny pink shrimp from Suruga Bay, dredged only in spring and autumn.
Hatsu-gatsuo — the “first bonito,” racing up the coast at spring’s end, lean and celebrated in old poems.

A translucent sayori (halfbeak) nigiri with a silver-blue stripe, topped with grated ginger, on a black plate — Spring — *sayori* (halfbeak), slim and silver, finished with grated ginger.

A lightly seared sawara (Spanish mackerel) nigiri, the skin charred, on a dark stone plate — Spring — *sawara* (Spanish mackerel), lightly seared; its kanji (鰆) carries the season.

A French-style plated sawara dish — cured slices with microgreens, foam, puffed grains and shaved turnip on a grey plate — The same spring fish in another idiom — sawara cured French-style, with foam and shaved turnip, at a Western restaurant in Japan. The seasonal calendar applies just as strictly there.

Summer (夏)

Summer leans on cool, clean white fish and stamina foods.

Shinko — the baby gizzard shad (young kohada), the season’s first in July; pound for pound the most expensive fish in Tokyo, and a quiet contest over who serves it earliest.
Aji — horse mackerel at its fatty peak.
Isaki — chicken grunt, a prized early-summer white fish.
Anago — sea eel, soft and at its best in the warm months.
Hamo — pike conger, the soul of a Kyoto summer, painstakingly bone-cut.
Uni — Hokkaido sea urchin, richest in summer.
Unagi & ayu — freshwater eel (eaten on doyō no ushi for stamina) and sweetfish, the washoku stars of the heat.
Torigai — cockle; a spring shellfish whose season lingers into early summer.

A generous uni (sea urchin) nigiri on a stone plate — Summer — *uni* at its richest.

A torigai (cockle) nigiri, its dark-edged mantle glossy, on a hinoki counter — Early summer — *torigai* (cockle), its season lingering past spring.

Autumn (秋)

Autumn is the harvest — fish laying fat back on, and roe.

Sanma — Pacific saury, the fish of autumn, grilled whole with salt or pressed as nigiri.
Modori-gatsuo — the “returning bonito,” swimming back south fat and rich, the mirror image of spring’s lean hatsu-gatsuo.
Aki-saba — autumn mackerel, oily and superb.
Kohada — the gizzard shad now grown into its prime.
Ikura & sake — the autumn salmon run brings glistening salmon roe.
Kanpachi, mushrooms, chestnuts — the season’s harvest reaching the kitchen.
Kaki — oysters come into season as the cold arrives in late autumn, before peaking in winter.

A fatty sanma (Pacific saury) nigiri with silver skin and grated ginger on a stone plate — Autumn — fatty *sanma* (Pacific saury), with ginger.

A plump oyster (kaki) nigiri, glossy on the rice, on a pale stone plate — Late autumn — *kaki* (oyster), plump and at its best as the cold sets in.

Winter (冬)

Winter is fat and richness — the cold’s reward.

Honmaguro & ōtoro — bluefin at its yearly peak; the cold is what lays on the belly fat. (See the tuna guide.)
Buri — yellowtail as kan-buri (寒鰤), the winter king of Himi and the Hokuriku coast.
Hirame — flounder as kan-birame, its flesh tightened by the cold.
Tara & shirako — cod, and its prized milt (shirako), a winter luxury.
Fugu — pufferfish, the great winter ceremony of Japanese dining.
Kani — snow crab, the season’s centrepiece.
Ankō & ankimo — monkfish and its rich liver, the “foie gras of the sea.”
Kaki & nori — oysters at their plump best, and the winter-harvested nori that wraps the year’s finest gunkan.
Kaki (柿) — kaki again, a different kanji from the oyster: the persimmon, the fruit that so often closes a washoku meal in the cold months.

Slices of fatty pink kan-buri (winter yellowtail) sashimi with grated ginger in a ceramic bowl — Winter — *kan-buri* (寒鰤), winter yellowtail, served as a tsumami with grated raddish.

Two creamy lobes of shirako (cod milt) in ponzu with grated daikon and scallion, on a floral plate — Winter — *shirako* (cod milt), creamy and rich, in a tart ponzu.

Snow crab served in its own shell with crab miso, roe and a savoury jelly, garnished with edible flowers — Winter — snow crab dressed in its own shell, with its miso, roe, and a savoury jelly.

A crab gunkan, nori-wrapped sushi topped with snow crab leg, innards and orange roe — And as sushi — snow crab (left) and *shirako* (right) as *gunkan*, side by side.

A shirako gunkan, nori-wrapped sushi topped with creamy cod milt — And as sushi — snow crab (left) and *shirako* (right) as *gunkan*, side by side.

A slice of glossy ripe persimmon with a quenelle of cream on a ceramic plate — A washoku close — sliced persimmon (柿) with cream, the *other* kaki.

This is why a chef sources the way he does, and why the same counter rewards a return visit a season later. To eat the shun is to taste the year passing — and to understand that, at a Japanese counter, the calendar is the menu. (For where these fish come from, see meisanchi; for how they’re sequenced into a meal, the anatomy of a sushi omakase.)