Pioneering Women in the World

of Sushi

In the STORY of SUSHI, the reader encounters a number of women trying to break into the male-dominated world of sushi. Here’s a passage from the book:

In Japan, sushi is a man’s world. Male chefs use all manner of excuses to defend their sushi bars against women who want to work there. Women can’t be sushi chefs, they say, because makeup, body lotion, and perfume destroy the flavor of the fish and rice. Some male chefs claim that the area behind the sushi bar is sacred space, and would be defiled by the presence of a woman. Others say women don’t have the reflexes necessary for the knife work. The most common argument against female sushi chefs is that a woman’s hands are warmer than a man’s (not true). Sushi is a man’s world on the customer side of the sushi bar, too. At a traditional, high-end sushi bar in Japan, a Japanese woman who walks in to eat by herself is likely to feel just as intimidated and unwelcome as an American tourist.

But there are women trying to change all that, as I learned while researching and writing The Story of Sushi. Many of the women I feature here also appear in The Story of Sushi, but here I’ve been able to include interviews with them and other information that didn’t make it into the book.

a.k.a. “Sushi Girl”

“I was a tomboy growing up,” Nikki told me when I interviewed her over sushi in Venice Beach, California. “I liked hanging out with guys, and had always done guy stuff—I was really into sports, especially basketball. I was gregarious and uninhibited. I always did whatever I wanted to. The first time I ever ate sushi was when I was about ten years old, at a party. To me it didn’t look like food—it looked like ornaments. Then when I was probably 12 or 13 years old my uncle took me to eat sushi in Santa Monica. A week later I was sitting in class at school and realized I was craving the taste of sushi. I found a sushi place I could walk to from school. They had all-you-can-eat for $15. That was a lot of money for me back then. I would try not to spend my allowance on anything else. I often ate sushi every week, and sometimes two or three times in a single week. I’d walk to the sushi place from school!”

During high school, Nikki talked her way into a job as a waitress at a family-run Japanese restaurant. Later, while majoring in Ethnic Studies as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, she worked as a waitress at a sushi restaurant there. Straight out of college, Nikki headed to Japan as an English teacher. She fell in love with the place, and stayed for three years.

“There weren’t many Westerners where I was living,” Nikki remembers. “People would stare at me and sometimes avoid me on the sidewalk or on the train. But I loved the way Japanese restaurants were so small, and focussed on just one thing. The proprietors took pride in their particular speciality. Even the employees of McDonald’s were nothing like the ones in the U.S. They were energetic, outgoing, cheerful, and helpful, not dour and perpetually annoyed like the typical McDonald’s employee in America. The system emphasized craftsmanship in food. My favorite sushi places were tiny little bars with just a few seats.”

As I mention in The Story of Sushi, Nikki returned to the U.S. just as the California Sushi Academy opened its doors in 1998, and she was one of the first women to attend. After graduation, she worked as a sushi chef at a club called Miyagi’s on the Sunset Strip. “I didn’t perceive any prejudice against me because I was a woman,” Nikki says. “If I had, I probably would have just thrown my head back and laughed and kept on doing what I was doing.”

“I don’t go out to eat sushi in the U.S. very often,” Nikki says, “but when I do, I always sit at the sushi bar so I can check out the fish in the cases. When I get my first nigiri, I ignore sushi etiquette. When the chef isn’t looking I flip the nigiri over on its side and pluck a pinch of rice off the bottom and eat just that. I’m trying to determine by taste and texture whether the restaurant makes its own sushi rice or not, or whether they mix their own vinegar mix, or just use a premixed seasoned vinegar. Then I bite off a little piece of the fish to test its flavor and quality alone. Finally, I pick up the rest of the nigiri, dab it in a little soy sauce, and eat it like you’re supposed to. If it doesn’t taste perfect I’ll send it back. I’ll spar with chefs and wait staff over whether something is fresh or not. Since I look Anglo, they always assume I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I go to the Japanese fish markets once or twice a week to shop for fish, just like the sushi  chefs. I know what’s fresh and what isn’t.”

Tracy Griffith was a Hollywood actress and an experienced cook when she saw an ad for the California Sushi Academy in 1999 and decided to attend. “My dad had taken me to eat sushi in New York City when I was a kid,” Tracy told me over coffee in L.A. “I loved sushi. And I loved the weird stuff best. My favorite was ikura [salmon roe]. I loved uni [sea urchin]. I even loved natto [rotten soybeans]. The chefs would try to talk me out of eating it!” Later in Malibu, Tracy’s half sister, the actress Melanie Griffith, continued to take Tracy out for sushi, and she developed a lifelong passion for the cuisine.

But when Tracy arrived at the Sushi Academy in L.A., she was in for a rude shock—a new instructor, fresh from Japan. Here’s what I write about Tracy’s experience in The Story of Sushi :

Within five minutes of Tracy’s arrival, the Japanese instructor at the academy started yelling at her.

‘You should not be here!’ he screamed. He glared at her fingernail polish and her long red hair. ‘You unnatural! No such thing sushi woman!’

He spent the rest of the class trying to intimidate Tracy into quitting. When she returned for the next class he was irate.

‘What did I say?!’ he screamed. ‘What are doing here? You should not be here!’

Tracy complained to Toshi. The things the instructor was saying were illegal in America. Toshi shrugged and said there was nothing he could do—the instructor was a typical Japanese sushi chef; that’s the way they were. Tracy would just have to deal with it.

After graduation, Tracy walked into one Beverly Hills sushi restaurant after another, asking for a job. Everyone laughed at her. ‘There is no such thing,’ they said. ‘Get out!’

As I describe in The Story of Sushi, Tracy eventually went on to several jobs as a sushi chef, and her education continued. In 2004 she published a cookbook, Sushi American Style.

The foregoing text is copyright © 2007 by Trevor Corson. All rights reserved.

More women in the world of sushi coming soon:

Reiko Yuyama

Marisa Baggett

Fie Kruse

Kate Murray

Tali Sever

Plus:

• All-girl sushi bars in Japan

• The comic book heroine Sushi Chef Kirara

Bonus: U.S. Media Reports on Female Sushi Chefs

• A 2001 report by NPR’s “All Things Considered” on female sushi chefs in Japan; read the transcript:

All Things Considered

March 2, 2001

JAPANESE WOMEN ARE GRADUALLY MOVING INTO THE SO FAR MALE-DOMINATED PROFESSION OF SUSHI CHEF

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: In Japan, women have made great strides in business and politics, but they are still kept out of the kitchen. Most sushi restaurants refuse to hire women chefs. A handful of women are trying to change that. NPR’s Eric Weiner reports from Tokyo.

ERIC WEINER reporting: Twenty-one-year-old Akimi Ishabashi(ph) remembers the exact day when she was bitten by the sushi bug. It was on her very first visit to a sushi restaurant.

Ms. AKIMI ISHABASHI (Chef): When I went to a sushi shop, I was so fascinated by the sushi artisan making sushi for me. They were so cool. I thought, ‘That’s my job,’ and I should try it; I should go for it.

WEINER: From that day on, Ishabashi was determined to break into Japan’s exclusive and male-dominated world of sushi. Her friends thought she was crazy. Her parents were worried about the effect of all that demanding work on her complexion. But Ishabashi’s biggest challenge was finding someone willing to give her a chance. Most of Japan’s more than 30,000 restaurants have an unspoken policy of not hiring women, afraid that their male customers, the majority of sushi eaters in Japan, might not approve.

Mr. YOSHIHIRO SAKAUWA (Retired Naval Officer): (Foreign language spoken)

WEINER: Fifty-six-year-old Yoshihiro Sakauwa, a retired naval officer, is a lover of all things sushi. A good tekamaki, he says, is more than a meal; it’s an art form, an integral part of traditional Japanese culture, like Sumo wrestling. ‘You don’t see many women in the Sumo ring,’ says Sakauwa, and he prefers not to see women behind the sushi counter either.

Mr. SAKAUWA: (Through Translator) If I saw a woman making sushi, I would be shocked. I don’t know if I would want to eat there. The ingredients and the procedures may be the same, but I couldn’t help but feel that the sushi has no flavor, no edge if it were made by a woman.

WEINER: Many Japanese men believe that a woman’s hands are warmer than a man’s, upsetting the delicate interplay of rice and raw fish. There’s no medical evidence to back up that claim. In fact, if anything, a woman’s hands are slightly cooler than a man’s. Some Japanese men are also worried that a woman’s makeup might spoil the flavor or that women don’t have the reflexes needed to handle an extremely perishable item like raw fish. Of course, not all Japanese men feel that way.

Mr. SADAHAL MADAYAMA (Restaurant Owner): (Foreign language spoken)

WEINER: Sadahal Madayama owns this popular chain of sushi restaurants in Tokyo, a business his father first started in 1923. Everything about the restaurant, from the wooden counters to the translucent shogi(ph) screens, smells of tradition. But a few years ago, Madayama broke with tradition when he decided to actively recruit women sushi chefs. It was partly a business decision. The tight job market at the time made it difficult to find workers of any gender. At first, he wasn’t sure how the women would perform, but now he says he no longer has any doubts.

Mr. MADAYAMA: (Through Translator) They say that women are not reliable or have slow reflexes. But in fact, women are faster than men. I think the real reason why there have been so few female sushi chefs is because the male sushi chefs don’t want any competition.

WEINER: Madayama has since hired 20 women, including Akimi Ishabashi, the woman who fell in love with sushi on first taste.

Sushi chefs enjoy a sort of celebrity status in Japan, but achieving the rank of shokunine(ph) or master chef is not easy. It normally takes at least 10 years of working as an apprentice. Amana Miyuki(ph) is only about halfway through the process. She says it is a demanding job.

Ms. AMANA MIYUKI (Sushi Apprentice): (Through Translator) At first, I was worried if I could perform as well as the male sushi chefs, but I was determined to succeed.

WEINER: Female sushi chefs like Miyuki are still extremely rare in Japan, so rare that customers do a double take when they see one behind the counter. But their numbers are growing and slowly--ever so slowly--Japanese men are beginning to acknowledge that a good piece of sushi is a good piece of sushi no matter who make it. Eric Weiner, NPR News, Tokyo.

• A 2002 article in the New York Times on female sushi chefs, including mention of Tali Sever and the California Sushi Academy:

The New York Times

June 5, 2002

Section F; Column 3; Dining In, Dining Out; Pg. 1

SHE HAS A KNIFE AND SHE KNOWS HOW TO USE IT

By Elaine Louie

By history and tradition, sushi-making has always been a man’s world. Men, naturally, have come up with all sorts of good reasons for keeping it that way.

“They say that women cannot make sushi because their hands are too warm and that will ruin the fish,” said Yoko Ogawa, 30, a chef at Yamaguchi in Midtown Manhattan, who spoke through an interpreter. She held out her small hands, which were pleasantly cool.

Hiromi Suzuki, who was taught to make sushi by her father, Akira Suzuki, the chef and owner of Mie in the East Village, said: “This is what my father has heard -- that women can’t make sushi because they wear perfume and makeup, and the smell of the perfume and makeup will ruin the food, and that women can’t become sushi chefs because behind the counter is a sacred area, and that women are all silly.”

Women, who have long since claimed their place preparing European and American cuisines, are slowly entering the once exclusively male domain of sushi-making. In New York City, at least six women, including Ms. Ogawa and Ms. Suzuki, are at work slicing tuna into perfect rosy rectangles and molding lightly vinegared rice just so. In Los Angeles, about nine women are making sushi. In Japan, figures are hard to come by, but it is clear that the number of women who are sushi chefs is on the rise there, too.

“I think there are at least 200 women sushi chefs in Japan,” said Toshio Suzuki, the owner-chef of Sushi Zen in Midtown. He has trained two women as sushi chefs, Takako Yoneyama, 52, the owner of Taka in Greenwich Village, and Miho Tanaka, 43, at Sushi a Go-Go near Lincoln Center.

For a woman to become a sushi chef in Japan has been easier since 1999. That year, Japan revised its Equal Employment Opportunity Law to mandate equality in hiring and promotion. Japan also lifted a ban that prohibited women from working later than 10 p.m. But laws alone weren’t keeping women from becoming sushi chefs.

“It’s time to break tradition,” said Sumio Sone, owner of Sushi Rose in Midtown. Sushi Rose employs one woman, Eri Sugimoto, among its sushi chefs. “The new generation, both the new owners and the woman who wants to be a chef, no longer care about tradition. This is America. New York City accepts new things. Why not women chefs?”

Toshi Sugiura, who opened Restaurant Hama in 1979, is the owner of the California Sushi Academy in Venice, Calif. The number of women in his six-month classes has increased to 50 percent this year, up from 20 percent in 1998, when the school opened. He said he had thought his students would be Asian immigrants, “but 70 percent of the students were American. So I changed my vision. Sushi is becoming a worldwide food. Why can’t black people and white people make sushi?”

Norie Yamamoto is a consultant at American Business Creation in Manhattan, which helps place workers in Japanese restaurants in the United States. Last year, she said, the company assisted 15 women who are sushi chefs from Japan in securing green cards, five more than in 2000. “It’s not like in Japan,” she said. “The position is more widely open here for a woman sushi chef.”

Even at some of the most traditional Japanese restaurants in New York, the barriers to women seem to be evaporating. Kiku Shiraishi, president of Hatsuhana, a 27-year-old restaurant on East 48th Street, said that in the eight years he has been there, “no woman has ever come to interview. But if she came next week, and had about five years of experience, we might hire her.”

The women who become sushi chefs are willing to beg to become apprentices. They prefer to work in public rather than hidden from view in a kitchen. And although they are more motivated by artistry than salary, money is a drawing card.

“The head sushi chef makes $50,000, and the regular sushi chef makes a little less,” Ms. Ogawa of Yamaguchi said. At Sushi Rose, Mr. Sone pays $80,000 to his executive chef, Etsuji Oishi, a man, and $40,000 to $50,000 to the other chefs, including Ms. Sugimoto. A non-sushi chef makes around $30,000, Ms. Yamamoto said.

The tradition of sushi has an allure. “I have always wanted to work with raw fish because I love to eat it,” said Ms. Sugimoto, who is 27. Four years ago, she was cooking home-style foods like seaweed and pork at a restaurant in Tokyo. Sushi beckoned, although Ms. Sugimoto knew of only one sushi chef who was a woman.

She asked a friend who owned a chain of sushi restaurants if she could apprentice with one of his chefs. “I had to save some money, and beg him to let me clean the restaurant,” Ms. Sugimoto said.

And so she mopped floors and waited on tables and learned how to make sushi. “First, you touch the fish to get the feeling of how to slice it,” she said. “You divide the parts, and when you slice for sashimi, it has to be softer, thinner. For sushi, you cut to fit on top of the rice. You wipe off the knife after each fish, to wipe off the fish oil.”

She bought fish with her own pocket money and practiced for hours at home. “For months, I practiced shaping the rice until it became so hard I couldn’t work with it,” she said. Each time she shaped the rice, she put a piece of fish on it. She did this over and over again. It took her a year to make rice with the correct flavor and consistency.

She learned to make 50 kinds of sushi, starting with the easiest. She wrapped seaweed around rice, and topped it with caviar. Next, she learned to position a shrimp atop the rice. These two sushi don’t require cutting. “Then flounder, because it’s cheap, and you can make a mistake,” she said. “Mackerel, you have to leave a little bit of skin on, and squid doesn’t follow the shape of the rice. Abalone is still moving around. It’s alive!” To demonstrate this point, Mr. Oishi slapped a piece of abalone on the counter, and it wriggled for two seconds.

“The giant clam is also alive, and doesn’t follow the shape of the rice,” Ms. Sugimoto said. Neither does octopus. At last, she graduated to slicing toro, the rich, tender belly of the tuna. “It’s the most expensive,” she said. “It’s $25 a pound.”

It was two years before she was permitted to serve her sushi to customers. In 2000, she arrived at Sushi Rose in Manhattan. “I want to have a place that is all female sushi chefs,” Mr. Sone said. “It’s nice to see beautiful ladies.”

Mr. Oishi, his executive chef, raised no objection. “When I was first asked if Eri could work here, I said nothing,” Mr. Oishi said. “Men and women -- there’s no difference. My mother was the chef of a restaurant. I knew women could cook.”

Like Ms. Sugimoto, Ms. Ogawa worked as an apprentice, after pleading her case to a chef in her hometown of Utsunomiya, Japan. “He could see my passion to become a sushi chef,” she said. After work, she too practiced. “I made 200 pieces in less than two hours,” she said. “That’s 100 pieces in an hour, one piece every few seconds.”

When she came to the United States in 1999, she first worked at Yamaguchi’s branch in Fort Lee, N.J. “The men would say, ‘Oh, what can she do?’ I began to get requests for me to serve them,” she said. In Manhattan, the menu includes her sushi roll -- the Yoko roll, an inside-out roll with broiled eel, yam and an oba leaf. She is 30, and before she turns 40, she said, “I want to own my own Japanese restaurant.”

Takako Yoneyama already does -- Taka in Greenwich Village. Her road to her own place started in 1985, when she trained 11 hours a day for a year with Mr. Suzuki at Sushi Zen. Then, from 1986 to 1993, she made 400 bento boxes a day for her Fuji Catering company on the Lower East Side. She bought her restaurant in 1994.

Mr. Suzuki agreed to teach her only after seeing that she’d already mastered basic knife skills. Since she was a family friend, she asked not to be paid. Because Mr. Suzuki knew her, he entrusted her to open up the restaurant an hour before the others arrived. “I wouldn’t be a sushi chef if I didn’t go to Sushi Zen,” she said.

Ms. Yoneyama said she did every job that came her way. “I prepared,” she said. “I made the simple rolls, the kappa maki, the tekka maki, the futo maki. I couldn’t cut fish until the end of the year.” At her new restaurant, “The first year, there were maybe 10 people a day,” Ms. Yoneyama said. “I had time to practice.”

Recently, she tossed together a fresh cooked lobster and slivered cucumber salad. Then she beheaded two jumbo raw Canadian shrimp. She served the sweet, crunchy meat as sashimi, and deep-fried the heads to a perfect crisp.

“What’s exciting about being a female sushi chef is not the handling of the fish,” she said. “It’s more creative. I see the customers. I see happiness.”

At Mie, Hiromi Suzuki, 24, is training with her father. She knows that to prepare the giant clam, she has to drop it into hot water for a second, and then into ice water, in order to slip off the skin.

“I love being a sushi chef,” said Ms. Suzuki, who in her junior year dropped out of Brearley, the private Manhattan girls’ school, and began lazing about the house. Two years later, her father asked her to help him at Mie. “My parents spent all that money,” she said, sighing. “I am such a bad daughter.” Although she is now a part-time student at Hunter College, she thinks of herself as a sushi chef. “I still need to learn consistency,” she said. “Will it stand up straight? Is it too big, or is it too small?”

Female sushi chefs are not, of course, always Japanese. Maria Roman was 13 when she first sampled sushi; her family had just moved to Manhattan from the Dominican Republic. “I ate a tuna roll and a California roll,” she said. “It was something different from Dominican food. It was very small, very delicate. And in my mind, I thought it was good.” When she was 16, she started making sushi at Daikichi on Lower Broadway. But she was taught only to cook rice, and to make rolls with a machine.

In 1995, she went to Kurumazushi, where she was hired by Toshihiro Uezu, the chef-owner, who she said has taught her everything she knows. “My friend recommended her,” Mr. Uezu said, shrugging and smiling. Ms. Roman, 27, works alongside Tatsuya Nagata, 36, who has made sushi for 19 years, first in Tokyo, and then in Manhattan. Mr. Nagata came to Kurumazushi in January. “She’s my first woman sushi chef,” he said.

In Venice, Calif., Tali Sever, a 31-year-old Israeli, is one of three female sushi chefs at Restaurant Hama. The others are Masayo Ohnuki, 32, and Ai Takayama, 28. All three are graduates of the sushi academy.

Ms. Sever said that of the roughly 15 women who graduated with her, she knows of six who became professional sushi chefs. But, with the humility proper to a novice, she uses the word chef carefully and doesn’t consider herself one -- yet. “To be a good sushi chef, it takes years,” she said. “I need to know how to become more inventive, to combine dressings with the many varieties of fish. I need at least two more years to feel comfortable.”

Ms. Roman has been making sushi for seven years. When asked if she can do everything that Mr. Nagata does, Ms. Roman said yes.

“Almost,” Mr. Nagata said. Then he laughed.