Why are sushi chefs male?

You can count on one hand the number of female chefs who make sushi in Toronto.

Their names are Yoshie Uematsu, Shoko Sakiyama and Mina Makimine. The first two are sous chefs at well-known uptown restaurants EDO and EDO-ko respectively. The third is the chef at the Japanese consul-general’s official residence in Forest Hill.

They are rarities because sushi-making is still a man’s world.

There are countless well-worn justifications why this is so. Women’s hands are too warm to handle raw fish or sushi rice. Their perfume, makeup and lotions interfere with the food. Hormonal fluctuations wreak havoc on delicate Japanese food.

Through a translator, Makimine says colleagues discuss “the biological differences which cause women, during their monthly cycles, to fall into different states that affect the delicate and sophisticated form of Japanese cooking.”

Sakiyama used to work with many women chefs in Osaka, but they stopped when they got married.

“In Japan, usually married women have to be at the home to take care of things.”

She arrived here five years ago to learn English and found a home at EDO a year later. She now works at EDO-ko. She thinks there’s some merit to the belief that women have warm hands. “But my hands are always cold,” she quickly adds.

Things are slowly changing.

Shigeo Kimura, chef/owner of Ginko Japanese Restaurant and president of the Japanese Restaurant Association of Canada, wants to hire women to make sushi.

“Women are more creative. Women are more sensitive. I believe they are much better for sushi chef. But unfortunately we don’t have it — still the majority of sushi chefs in Canada are men.”

Men dominate in all restaurant kitchens, not just Japanese ones.

Japan is more open now, says Kimura, with multiple sushi schools, more female students, and a growing acceptance that there are different routes to becoming a sushi chef.

At EDO, president and CEO Barry Chaim doesn’t care about gender.

“We care for kimochi (soul or spirit). It is not the only characteristic, but the most important. I look for character before personality.”

EDO has been on Eglinton for 23 years, EDO-ko on Spadina Rd. for 12 years. Only Uematsu and Sakiyama have progressed from helper, to cook, to chef and then to sous chef. One other woman, who was Chinese, made it as far as chef before leaving the business. Head and executive chefs have always been men.

Uematsu studied cooking in Osaka, specializing in pastries. She worked in restaurants, bakeries and hotels but not sushi spots, where women weren’t wanted and the grind wasn’t appealing. “For example, you just mix rice for two years, or every day vegetable peeling,” remembers Uematsu.

She came to Canada in 2001 and started the next year at EDO.

Sakiyama, meanwhile, started cooking in Osaka at izakayas (casual spots for drinks and meals) and hotels.

The EDO chefs work at the sushi bar and in the kitchen.

Makimine, too, makes more than just sushi. In July, she prepared dinner for the Japanese Emperor Akihito and his wife, Empress Michiko, on their royal visit to Canada.

Kimura, who married a Canadian and whose Canadian-born son now works at Ginko (though not making sushi), suspects there are so few female sushi chefs here because the knife skills are so difficult, sushi restaurants “sometimes are very, very conservative, not open like the French or Italian style,” and because the job is so stressful.

“We are busy and it’s so much hard work. It’s really rushing to make the sushi. Sometimes there is a lot of stress — that might be difficult for women to handle. Sometimes we are screaming and yelling our heads off.”

Nadeshiko Sushi is the only sushi restaurant in Japan where all of the sushi chef’s are women. The Wall Street Journal interviewed Jiro’s son Yoshikazu in response to the famous movie “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” where he explained why there were no female sushi chef’s in the documentary. He exposed a traditionalist opinion that a woman’s menstrual cycle changes their sense of taste, making them unfit for high end sushi making. Women in Japan also face the unfortunate urban legend of having an overall warmer body temperature (a half-truth and not different enough to merit discussion) which makes them “unfit for handling raw fish,” as well as the idea that the use of perfume and makeup over time can mask their sense of smell. Even if it were the case that potentially having a slightly higher body temperature could affect the ability to make sushi, younger men can have a slightly higher body temperature than older men, so shouldn’t the same logic apply to them?

I instantly viewed these claims as ridiculous, but decided I should do my due diligence before preparing this article. I wanted to take a look at some of the studies which are used to back up the sexist ideas that women make inferior chefs. A study from over 15 years ago found that food consumption and preferences can possibly change during one’s menstrual cycle (and pregnancy), but obviously I found absolutely nothing to suggest that women would be unable to be equal or even better sushi chef’s than their male counterparts In addition, one’s body temperature variance is typically very slight, and even occurs in men for many different reasons (minor illnesses, clothes, exercise, etc.). The study in question is “Variations in food preference and consumption across the menstrual cycle” which indicated that while some taste and smell preferences may change slightly, there didn’t seem to be any evidence as to whether it made any qualitative difference in preparation, particularly as we’re looking at a woman’s ability to handle food, not what she wants to eat at that moment. It is always sad when one-off studies are used to promote a sexist agenda.

The sushi chef’s at Nadeshiko Sushi don’t just have to deal with long hours and hard work which comes with any kitchen job. Apparently, on occasion random men will come into the restaurant not to actually eat anything, but just to insult the female chefs skills and work appropriateness. It is revolting and juvenile, but the sushi chefs take it in stride and continue to put out a quality product to this day. Critics of the restaurant call it gimmicky and tacky, appealing to those who enjoy fashionable women more than the sushi itself, but that is a situation we see the world over and not unique to Nadeshiko. Yet with employees who have graduated from the Tokyo Sushi Academy, these men could not be more wrong.

Japan is a country that often adheres to longstanding and deeply held traditions, so it is understandable that such beliefs regarding the production and handling of sushi may still be around. That being said, not everyone is as tradition-bound as everyone else, and Nadeshiko has remained open for a number of years, so hopefully we are seeing signs that the superstitions and urban legends are not held by all, and that there is some positive change in the industry and its customers.