A Pioneer Among Female Sushi Chefs

Yuki Yasui, the third-generation owner of Yahata Sushi, was a female sushi chef.

Born in March 1905, she passed away at the age of 102 about 20 years ago.

I have written before about how, when Yuki was a child, Marquis Shigenobu Okuma would often play with her.

At that time, Yahata-ya was still a dango shop, but it became a sushi restaurant in the middle of the Taisho era.

The family started the sushi restaurant because Yuki loved sushi so much that her parents thought, “If she loves it that much, why not open a sushi restaurant?”

At first, they hired sushi chefs to run the business, but Yuki’s love of sushi grew so strong that she began making nigiri herself by watching and imitating them.

Before long, she was standing at the sushi counter herself.

She was already making sushi by around the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923—more than a hundred years ago now.

Incidentally, the chef Yuki learned from by watching and imitating was nicknamed “Kizukura,” and apparently all sushi chefs in those days called one another by nicknames.

Kizukura was called that because he had a scar on his face, while Bun the Okera was said to be someone who never kept money overnight. It is interesting how these differed from today’s nicknames, such as “Ei-chan” or “Shin-chan.” …I have wandered off topic a little 💦

I do not know whether there were other female sushi chefs in Japan at the time, but there is no doubt that Yuki was an outsider and one of the pioneers in the male-dominated sushi world.

When the fourth generation was young, he apparently heard this story from Yuki:

A customer opened the sliding door and came in, but the moment he saw Yuki standing behind the counter, he said, “What, a woman is making sushi?” and turned on his heel and left.

Today, the number of female sushi chefs has grown, and they are respected, but back then it was an age when the very idea of women making sushi was unthinkable.

Yuki is said to have felt deeply frustrated at the time.

Incidentally, when Yuki celebrated her 100th birthday, we brought sushi toppings and vinegared rice to her home and asked her to make sushi for us.

She had been away from sushi for 40 years and was living with dementia, so we thought making sushi might be too difficult—but we asked her to try.

Then, she first washed her hands and began making nigiri as she faced the sushi toppings.

What is more, she carefully checked both sides of each topping before making the nigiri.

And the finished sushi was so beautifully shaped that it could have appeared in a sushi textbook.

Beautiful sushi is sometimes described as having “the shape of a fan,” and Yuki’s nigiri truly had exactly that shape.

They were perhaps one and a half times the size of today’s sushi.

That was the standard size for nigiri in the old days.

When we tasted it, it was wonderfully airy and gently came apart in the mouth.

Who would have thought that sushi made for the first time in 40 years, and made instinctively by a 100-year-old, could be so delicious!

It was a deeply moving experience.

There was something Yuki would always say to her son, the fourth generation, during her active years.

It was: “Make each piece with all your heart.”

That spirit has been passed down through the generations and lives on in the fifth generation’s sushi today.

It is also reflected in the title of the fourth generation’s recently published book, “Sushi Ikkan” (“One Piece of Sushi”).

At the sushi restaurant that the second generation began after being won over by his beloved daughter’s love of sushi, Yuki fully blossomed in her passion for sushi. It was passed on to her son and grandson, and continues into the future.

Today, I wrote this blog post in tribute to Yuki, a pioneer among female sushi chefs.