Tokyo (AFP)
Women have hot hands, their taste is altered during menstruation and they cannot work long hours, say those in Japan for whom the art of making sushi would be reserved for men.
But a growing number of Japanese women want to put an end to these old myths and train in the most prestigious restaurants and establishments of the country to become master sushi.
Mizuho Iwai, 33, is an apprentice at Onodera, an upscale restaurant in the Ginza district, with checkerboard streets lined with sparkling boutiques of luxury brands from around the world, and home to many of the top rated sushi tables in the planet.
In an area where women are clearly in the minority, Ms. Iwai is aware of being an anomaly. "But that's why I wanted to go against the status quo," she told AFP. "I said to myself: + This is my mission +".
At Onodera, she is not entirely alone: there was a young girl among the ten apprentices with her before the restaurant closed temporarily in April due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the ten cooks in the restaurant are all men.
- Reluctant customers -
The work can be exhausting and requires years of learning. As in catering around the world, the hours are very heavy.
Apprentices must memorize the name and appearance of a multitude of Japanese fish, learn the techniques of filleting, cutting, de-boning, which seem so simple in the hands of a seasoned professional but quickly turn into disaster in those of a novice.
The Onodera restaurant also has its own flirtatiousness, its particular way imposed on the staff to pass through the traditional curtain, or noren: with an elegant gesture of the elbow.
"My colleagues accepted me," said Mizuho Iwai, who decided to devote himself to the art of sushi after cooking in small Japanese restaurants.
"They don't treat me any differently because I'm a woman," she says just after practicing slicing Japanese horse mackerel with one of the cooks.
The world of washoku, or Japanese cuisine, has long been dominated by men, even more than in Italian or French gastronomy, according to Fumimasa Murakami, professor at the Tokyo Sushi Academy.
There are no official data on the number of women authorized to make sushi in restaurants, but Mr. Murakami estimates that their proportion is "less than 10%".
"The reluctance to see women in the kitchen in Japan remains strong, including in the world of sushi," he said.
"And there are actually customers who don't want to see women behind the counter," he adds. "It is the mature customers who have the hardest time accepting this."
- "Nice work!" -
But even cooks have peddled these misconceptions that women's hands are too hot to maintain the freshness of raw fish, or that their taste is skewed during menstruation.
When Onodera chef Akifumi Sakagami, 46, started as an apprentice in a sushi restaurant over 30 years ago in the northern city of Sapporo, women were almost non-existent in the kitchen.
For him, being a cook is a matter of "skill, talent and effort", which has nothing to do with being a man or a woman.
Fuka Sano, the other apprentice of the restaurant, says that she did not worry about the low feminization of the field she chose.
"I think many women are convinced that it is a man's job because they are so poorly represented there," said the 18-year-old girl.
She decided to enter the profession after an uplifting trip to London.
"Sorry to say that but the sushi in the chains of Great Britain was really not appetizing!", She laughs. One day she would like to help raise the level of Japanese cuisine abroad.
His co-apprentice hopes that their example will make a difference.
"It doesn't matter whether the cook is a man or a woman," said Ms. Iwai.
"I hope this cliché will disappear and that there will be more choices for women. It is a really nice job!", She concludes.
© 2020 AFP