Even at some of the most traditional Japanese restaurants in New York, the barriers to women seem to be evaporating. Kiku Shiraishi, president of Hatsuhana, a 27-year-old restaurant on East 48th Street, said that in the eight years he has been there, ''no woman has ever come to interview. But if she came next week, and had about five years of experience, we might hire her.''

The women who become sushi chefs are willing to beg to become apprentices. They prefer to work in public rather than hidden from view in a kitchen. And although they are more motivated by artistry than salary, money is a drawing card.

''The head sushi chef makes $50,000, and the regular sushi chef makes a little less,'' Ms. Ogawa of Yamaguchi said. At Sushi Rose, Mr. Sone pays $80,000 to his executive chef, Etsuji Oishi, a man, and $40,000 to $50,000 to the other chefs, including Ms. Sugimoto. A non-sushi chef makes around $30,000, Ms. Yamamoto said.

The tradition of sushi has an allure. ''I have always wanted to work with raw fish because I love to eat it,'' said Ms. Sugimoto, who is 27. Four years ago, she was cooking home-style foods like seaweed and pork at a restaurant in Tokyo. Sushi beckoned, although Ms. Sugimoto knew of only one sushi chef who was a woman.

She asked a friend who owned a chain of sushi restaurants if she could apprentice with one of his chefs. ''I had to save some money, and beg him to let me clean the restaurant,'' Ms. Sugimoto said.

And so she mopped floors and waited on tables and learned how to make sushi. ''First, you touch the fish to get the feeling of how to slice it,'' she said. ''You divide the parts, and when you slice for sashimi, it has to be softer, thinner. For sushi, you cut to fit on top of the rice. You wipe off the knife after each fish, to wipe off the fish oil.''

She bought fish with her own pocket money and practiced for hours at home. ''For months, I practiced shaping the rice until it became so hard I couldn't work with it,'' she said. Each time she shaped the rice, she put a piece of fish on it. She did this over and over again. It took her a year to make rice with the correct flavor and consistency.