海苔

In the Taihō Code of 701 CE, the Japanese imperial court listed nori (海苔) among the marine products accepted as tax. The word itself is ancient, appearing in the oldest Japanese texts. Its kanji combine 海 ('sea') and 苔 ('moss'), but the native Japanese reading nori likely derives from a verb meaning 'to paste' or 'to glue,' because seaweed was sticky when wet. For over a thousand years, coastal communities in Japan harvested wild nori from rocks and wooden stakes set in shallow bays.

The transformation from wild harvest to cultivation happened in Tokyo Bay during the Edo period. In 1690, fishermen near Shinagawa noticed that nori spores attached to bamboo poles used for fish traps. They began deliberately placing stakes in the water, creating the first nori farms. But the process was unreliable. Entire harvests failed without explanation. Nori farming remained a gamble until a British botanist named Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker changed everything.

Drew-Baker, working at the University of Manchester in 1949, discovered the missing phase in the nori life cycle. The seaweed had a hidden microscopic stage where spores burrowed into oyster shells before emerging as the familiar leafy form. Japanese scientists applied her findings, and by the 1950s nori cultivation became predictable and abundant. Japan honors Drew-Baker annually at a shrine in Kumamoto Prefecture. She never visited Japan.

The sheet form most people recognize today, called yaki-nori (焼き海苔), was invented in the Asakusa district of Edo (Tokyo) around 1750, using papermaking techniques to press and dry seaweed into flat sheets. This is the nori that wraps onigiri and maki rolls worldwide. A word that once meant 'sea glue' now names a food that holds Japanese cuisine together, quite literally.