TA delicate fish with a metallic band on its flanks, the silver-striped herring can only be eaten fresh in the area where it is caught – the warm waters of southern Japan in Kagoshima Prefecture. Served as kibinago sashimi, it has become a regional delicacy: tiny, shiny fish served on a plate, rolled up like chain mail.

If your travel plans for 2024 don’t include Kagoshima, you can head to Kensington, London to see this dish instead. From October, a very special version of kibinago sashimi will be on display at the Japan House cultural centre as part of Looks Delicious! This is the first UK exhibition of Subscribethe realistic replicas of food used in Japan instead of printed menus.

Exhibition curator Simon Wright, programme director at Japan House, said: “Anyone who has been to Japan will have seen replicas of food outside restaurants and will no doubt have been fascinated; they are found nowhere else in the world. The opportunity to see them outside the country is rare: there has never been an exhibition like this in the UK before – and probably no exhibition created in this way has ever been shown in Japan either.”

Takizo Iwasaki, a businessman from Gujō Hachiman in Gifu Prefecture, began making sampuru for restaurants in the early 1930s. At that time, restaurants were mushrooming and many had begun selling Western-inspired dishes – known as Yōshoku language – unknown to customers. Iwasaki’s idea was to recreate dishes in wax so that people could see what they were going to eat. His company is still a major player in Sampuru today.

His first dish was an omelette filled with rice. Department stores and restaurants adopted these models, known as food samples, and they are still used today – although they are usually made of PVC – and presented in the same way as a menu in other cultures.

Tokyo’s Kappabashi Dogugai Street – also known as Kitchen Town – sells sampuru to the capital’s restaurants. Many are made by hand in workshops. While the creation of decorative fruits, vegetables and other foods is not unique to Japan, sampuru are an art form. As Wright explains, they are made by hand using molds made from the various shell elements. “The work is remarkably unmechanized and the pieces are made individually to order.”

Sam Thorne, general director of Japan House, said: “Sampuru is strange and exciting because it is a kind of hyper-realistic miniature sculpture – trompe l’oeil trick in three dimensions. One strange aspect is that you watch the people making it, as was captured so beautifully in Wim Wenders’ 1985 documentary. Tokyo-Gayou notice that the process is very similar to cooking: individual ingredients are cut, combined, arranged and served on plates.”

Ayumi Kuwata runs the Smile Labo workshop in Canterbury, where visitors have fun making miniature foods: sundaes, doughnuts and other treats. Kuwata learned in Japan, but says her skills and materials are completely different to those of Sampuru artisans.

“You can’t get food samples outside of Japan because they are so expensive and only in Japan do we have qualified specialists,” she says.

The price of top quality sampuru is so high that most Japanese shops rent it rather than buy it. While a visitor to the Iwasaki company’s Ganso shop can buy a sampuru bowl of onion gratin soup as a souvenir for £100, a display piece for a restaurant costs thousands.

For Looks Delicious!, Iwasaki was commissioned to create 47 sampuru, one for each prefecture in Japan, showcasing regional specialties and telling a cultural story of Japanese cuisine. The dishes include goya chanpuru – Bitter melon stir-fry – from Okinawa and seafood from Hokkaido. The program also explains how food models have become an integral part of nutrition education in Japan.

Wright said he was particularly fond of these Sampuru. “My favorite is the collection of models that represent the ingredients of a balanced daily diet for a diabetic and show the amount of salt, fat or sugar contained in some commonly consumed foods.”

Jake Hobson runs Niwaki, a business importing gardening and kitchen equipment from Japan to the UK, and uses sampuru for his kitchenware. He first came into contact with food sampling when he was living in Japan in the 1990s, first as a sculptor and then as a gardener.

“Although food samples are commonplace, they are also beautiful and handmade, and these works deserve to be showcased. You can be snooty about whether something is art or craft – but someone sat down and made these sampuru by hand.”

Hobson considers this niche skill a good example of Japanese craftsmanship: “They have the ability to create something that improves on the original. That’s what happens in horticulture, my field, where you try to improve the look of a tree or a plant. You see that in manga or anime too. They try to improve something to their liking – the amazing details in Sampuru are part of that.”

Wright notes that sampur also have a strong commercial purpose, which is why they are found in large quantities near production centers such as Osaka and Tokyo. He also believes that sampur demonstrate something inherent in Japanese culture.

“Attention to detail, excellent craftsmanship, pride in precision work – all of these are typical characteristics of manufacturing in Japan. They apply no less to the production of food replicas. Sampuru often look more appealing and real than the original. The replicas themselves can become the target.”