Roll over, male sushi chefs. In Japan, women challenge tradition.

Yuki Chidui makes tuna sushi at Nadeshiko, a Tokyo sushi restaurant with an all-female workforce. “I hope that some day it’s not ‘male sushi chef’ or ‘female sushi chef,’ just ‘sushi chef,’ ” Chidui says. (Koji Sasahara/AP)

By Anna Fifield-February 6

TOKYO — It’s Friday night in Tokyo and a bunch of men are lined up at a bar, drinking draft beer so cold the glasses have frosted over and eating plate after plate of sushi. So far, so normal.

Not normal, though: The chefs making the little slabs of rice and laying the fish on top are all women. In Japan, that’s a sight that’s even rarer than a late bullet train.

But a handful of women are challenging the age-old notion that their gender can’t make sushi.

“I hope that someday it’s not ‘male sushi chef’ or ‘female sushi chef,’ just ‘sushi chef,’ ” said Yuki Chidui, the manager of Nadeshiko Sushi, Japan’s first and only sushi bar run entirely by women.

Sushi chefs, like sumo wrestlers and geisha, are stereotypical personifications of Japanese culture.

According to the cliche, they should be old, serious and preferably bald men, as exemplified by Jiro Ono, the owner of a three-Michelin-starred sushi restaurant and the subject of the U.S. documentary film “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” Called “itamae” in Japanese — literally, “in front of the board” — the sushi chef is supposed to deliver a performance and some banter while wielding the knife.

[Obama dines at ‘Sukiyabashi Jiro,’ Tokyo’s venerable sushi restaurant]

Conventional wisdom has it that women can’t be sushi chefs because their hands are too warm or because they’re unreliable at certain times of the month. As Ono’s son Yoshikazu put it in a 2011 interview: “To be a professional means to have a steady taste in your food, but because of the menstrual cycle, women have an imbalance in their taste, and that’s why women can’t be sushi chefs.”

With her flowery blue kimono, long bangs and glittery eye makeup, 29-year-old Chidui certainly does not fit the stereotype. “Sometimes I feel like an animal that’s being watched, but I think of this as a performance and I need to prove myself to them by making good sushi,” she said from behind the counter.

Chidui thinks women have strengths that can work in their favor. “Women have better communication skills, so that helps us connect with our customers and to create a warm atmosphere,” she said. “And because our hands are smaller, our rolls are slightly smaller. So they’re cuter and easier to eat.”

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