She was entranced watching the chefs mold the rice and cut the fish. I thought, they are so cool. I wanted to be one, too. She knew it wouldn't be easy. Being a working woman in Japan has never been easy.
Many jobs are still out of reach for women, and most quit working when their marry.
But perhaps no profession has eluded women more than that of sushi chef. As long as anyone can remember here, women have been effectively barred from wielding the sushi-carving knife. The primary rationale is the claim that women's hands are warmer than men's, and heat, of course, is not good for raw fish. Isao Oishi, editor of Sushi magazine, says in his many years of eating and writing about the subject, he's only encountered five or six women working behind the sushi counter. In Tokyo's Asakusa neighborhood, one of the few sections of town where the smell and feel of old Japan remains, there's an unlikely sushi radical by the name of Sadao Maneyama.