By Frank McDonough

Dead fish wrapped in seaweed — that’s sushi. Besides being dead, it’s also expensive. It’s dead, it’s expensive, and it’s popular. Since its emergence in the early eighties as the health food of the cocaine generation, hundreds of sushi bars have opened up here in Los Angeles. Traditional sushi bars, jazz sushi bars, bargain “all you can eat” sushi bars, Korean and Chinese sushi bars — some high-tech, drop dead, we-saw-Miami-Vice-and-liked it; some highly traditional, with bamboo mats and servers wearing traditional Japanese garb.

Approaching the flat-black storefront of Tokyo Delve’s sushi bar on Lankershim, you know you’re not entering a regular sushi bar, or even one of the clones mentioned above. Be-sides the ominous black exterior and the flashing sign above the door like you’d see above a beer bar, you can’t help but notice the volume of the pulsing music that leaks through the storefront. It’s loud. Opening the door, the low waves of the subwoofer start vibrating your insides like a microwave cooking meat.

Upon entering, the whole staff shouts (to be heard above the music) the traditional Japanese greeting, Irrashai, in unison, and with manic enthusiasm. The inside is painted the same flat black as the outside. The walls and ceilings are festooned with Japanese lanterns that flash to the beat of the music, balloons, and other decorations. The bar area is lit by black light, and the wall behind the bar is covered with decorations and signs painted in green and orange fluorescent paint. The gees worn by the sushi chefs are also fluorescent green and orange. The room is crowded with sushi-craving patrons. It’s loud it’s raucous, and it’s popular. A small screen above the bar is connected to a camera outside — it always shows a line of people waiting to get in.

A 3,000-watt sound system cranks out disco and danceable rock tunes. You almost want to hold your sushi down, lest it skittle off your plate and onto the floor. The staff, wearing headsets to hear each other above the din, races around the room serving sushi and drinks. But that’s not all. At Benihana you get some choreographed knife play, at Delve’s you get a lot more — you get the “Shake,” the wave, and table dancing.

Tani “Delve” Yuichi is the owner of Tokyo Delve’s sushi bar and inventor of the “Shake.” Consisting of any one of a number of flavored Saki cocktails, the “Shake” is delivered by the waiter in typical Budo fashion. He bounds up to your table, shaker of ingredients in hand, and shakes them up in ever-quickening rhythm as the staff and any patrons nearby chant “Shake” in cadence. The “Shakes” themselves have unique Japanese names. For example, one drink is named Tagosaku, Japanese for “redneck.” Another is named Uwaki, which, according to Delve, is a word a newly wed Japanese man uses to describe his first night of sex to his buddies.

Every 20 to 30 minutes, the staff starts a “wave” across the room. Like its stadium counterpart, the wave starts at one end of the of the crowd and winds its way around and around the room. It is a good warm-up for what comes next.

Several signs posted around the room warn patrons not to stand on the tables and chairs. These are ignored when, twice nightly, the sound system (equipped with DAT because the subwoofer causes compact discs to skip) is cranked up a decibel or two, the lights are lowered, and everybody stands on their chairs and dances. As they dance, a light travels from chair to chair like a roulette marble — whoever is sitting, standing, or dancing where the light stops gets a free meal.

The whole atmosphere seems vaguely like a rock concert and, in fact, the restaurant is very popular with rock-and-rollers. Van Halen, Cheap Trick, and Bad English are just a few of the notable regulars here. Before Delve, who is a musician himself and a fan of American jazz greats like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, came here from Tokyo, he was involved with stage lighting, set-up, and tour booking.

Delve grew up in Japan in the fifties and sixties. Like many of his generation, he admired the energy and confidence Americans had in those years and, like many of his generation, he feels that America has since lost that spirit. He sees what he is doing at his Sushi bar — the “Shakes,” the wave, the table dancing — as his way of helping Americans to recapture that energy.

In a way, he might have something. The activities at Delve’s are geared to bring out a spirit of group participation and to dissolve personal boundaries. They attempt to bring about a social communion among strangers, something common here only in the hours after a major earthquake or conflagration. Whether going to a sushi bar can make a dent in the malignant individualism that grips our society is up for debate, but one thing is for sure at Tokyo Delve’s, it’s a lot of fun trying.