Female sushi chefs are uncommon around the world, but more so in Japan, and this isn't for good reason. This rarity of female sushi chefs in Japan is because of a deeply-rooted belief that women's warmer temperatures lead to creating inferior sushi, and that sushi chefs should have that macho "Edo-style" demeanor.
This has left to the belief and tradition that male sushi chefs make sushi that are of higher quality. This opinion is even shared by the son of sushi chef Jiro, perhaps the most famous sushi chef in Japan. His son has expressed his thoughts on the matter and agreed that women cannot create superior sushi because their menstrual cycle affects their sense of taste.
In retrospect, there are other more jobs in Japan which has poor record on gender equality.
Hope is not waning however. Some women are challenging the Japanese tradition, including 28-year-old Yuki Chidui.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Chidui is a sushi chef and manager running the sushi restaurant Nadeshico. The Tokyo restaurant's employees are all women.
"I think women are better at communicating with customers, and they're kind and gentle," said Chidui.
Unlike traditional sushi chefs in Japan, Chidui is soft-spoken and dresses differently. In the restaurant's flyers which promote Nadeshico's "fresh and kawaii" or cute motto, Chidui is portrayed as a doe-eyed manga character.
The image, she says, has been intentional, in order to veer away from the long-held tradition of closely cropped haired and macho sushi chefs. Chidui is often dressed in a summer kimonos bombarded with pink blossoms, while her assistant also wears a kimono but with manga buttons, according to Next Shark.
Chidui had been working at a department store before she began her own restaurant. Nadeshico opened in 2010, and since then, the brave restaurant owner said she has endured both insults and rude comments from her male customers questioning her abilities.
At one time, a customer even asked: "Can you really do it?"
According to the All Japan Sushi Association, there is no official record of statistics of the number of Japanese female sushi chefs. However, the association, which groups 5,000 sushi restaurant owners in the country, said that rarely is there female sushi chefs in all 35,000 sushi chefs in Japan.
The Japanese government has been encouraging women to join the workforce in recent years, after seeing that a stagnant economy would only worsen if women aren't freed from their homemaker or child-bearer status in Japan. The government saw that getting out of such belief would contribute more to the country's production and growth, according to The Associated Press.
