Women have warm hands, their periods alter their sense of taste and they can’t work long hours — just some of the claims from those in Japan who believe women can’t be sushi chefs.
But a growing number of women in the country determined to shatter those myths are training and working as sushi chefs in some of Japan’s most revered restaurants and institutions.
Mizuho Iwai is a trainee at the upscale Onodera restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza, a ritzy neighborhood home to some of the world’s top-ranked sushi restaurants.
Photo: AFP
In an industry where women are still rarely seen, she knew she would be an anomaly.
“I think there are a few [female] chefs but it’s rare. But I wanted to challenge things because of that,” the 33-year-old apprentice said. “I thought: this is my mission.”
And at Onodera, she’s not totally alone, there was one other woman among the 10 apprentices training at the restaurant before it recently closed temporarily over the COVID-19 outbreak. All 10 of the restaurant’s chefs are men.
Photo: AFP
The work can be grueling and requires years to master. Apprentices must learn everything from the names of different types of fish to removing scales and slicing properly. They are even instructed on how to correctly enter through the traditional drapes inside Onodera, by lifting and parting them with an elbow.
“My colleagues have accepted me,” said Iwai, who decided to become a sushi chef after cooking in small Japanese restaurants.
“They don’t treat me specially just because I’m a woman,” she added, after learning how to slice Japanese horse mackerel. “They teach me as a person.”
‘STRONG RESISTANCE’ TO WOMEN
The world of washoku, or Japanese cuisine, has long been dominated by men, more so than Italian or French cuisine, according to Fumimasa Murakami, a 54-year-old teacher at Tokyo Sushi Academy, which was still running a scaled back schedule of classes earlier this month.
There is no official data on the gender breakdown of sushi chefs in Japan, but Murakami estimates women make up “less than 10 percent.”
“[Resistance] against female chefs remains strong in Japanese cuisine, including sushi,” he said.
“Customers who don’t want a female chef at the counter do exist,” he added. “Older customers in particular have difficulty accepting it.”
But even sushi chefs have been known to repeat claims that women’s hands are too warm to keep raw fish fresh, or that their periods alter their sense of taste. Others say the job is unsuitable for women because of the long and late hours.
“In Japan, it is still strongly believed that it is women who take care of family. But sushi chefs work in the evening so it’s difficult for women,” said Yuki Noguchi, a 32-year-old former primary school teacher who finished her eight-month sushi chef training at the academy in December.
“That’s why I think the number of women who want to become a sushi chef is small in the first place,” she said.
PUNISHING TRAINING
Onodera’s head chef Akifumi Sakagami said the sushi world’s reputation for punishing training drove away women but also young people of both genders.
“I think women need a lot of courage to jump in,” the 46-year-old said.
Sakagami started as an apprentice more than 30 years ago in the northern city of Sapporo, when female chefs and trainees were essentially nonexistent.
“When I joined the industry, the working conditions in the washoku world were tough,” he said, as he showed Iwai how to thinly slice tuna and taught her how to properly peel freshly steamed shrimp. “It was long working hours with low pay. It was physically tough.”
“But the work environment is changing along with other changes in society. I think it’s getting better for both men and women,” he added.
He welcomes those changes and says being a chef depends not on gender but “competence, talent and how much effort people put in.” Fuka Sano, the other female apprentice at Onodera, said she didn’t think too much about the lack of women in the field when she decided to become a sushi chef.
“I guess women think a sushi chef is a man’s job because there are so few women,” the 18-year-old said.
But she was determined to enter the profession, after a formative trip to London.“I’m sorry to say this but sushi at chain restaurants in Britain didn’t seem appealing!” she laughed. She hopes to improve the standards of Japanese food overseas.
And Sano wants her food to be judged on its own merits, without regard for her gender.
“I want them to come (to the restaurant) for food,” she said, not “because I’m a woman.”
Her fellow apprentice Iwai hopes women like her are helping change the industry.
“It doesn’t matter whether the chef is a man or woman,” she said. “I hope the fixed image will disappear and there will be more options for women. It’s really a fun job.”
Words of the Year are not just interesting, they are telling. They are language and attitude barometers that measure what a country sees as important. The trending vocabulary around AI last year reveals a stark divergence in what each society notices and responds to the technological shift. For the Anglosphere it’s fatigue. For China it’s ambition. For Taiwan, it’s pragmatic vigilance. In Taiwan’s annual “representative character” vote, “recall” (罷) took the top spot with over 15,000 votes, followed closely by “scam” (詐). While “recall” speaks to the island’s partisan deadlock — a year defined by legislative recall campaigns and a public exhausted
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
RSS