The Sake Industry

JAPANESE SAKE INDUSTRY

The brewing of sake, rice wine, is Japan's most ancient industry, its origins dating back before written history. According to the earliest chronicles, sake brewing was originated by a goddess, who chewed mouthfuls of rice to achieve natural fermentation. One theory of the beginnings of brewing in Japan is that virginal girls chewed rice ,stimulating the release of enzymes in their mouths that thus achieved natural fermentation. They would then spit the mixture into large bowls, which were sealed for three days, whereupon the brew was drunk with proper ceremonial at the harvest festival. Support for this theory of the origins of sake comes from Okinawa, where one octogenarian reported that as a child she sat in a circle of young girls and participated in just such a method of production, chewing rice until her jaws ached.

Despite this theory of the female origins of sake brewing, in more recent eras women were banned from  breweries. The proverb "Let a woman enter the brewery and the sake will sour" was common thorughout brewing families. A combination of Buddhist, Shinto, and folk beliefs regarding pollution banned women
not only from breweries but also from climbing certain sacred mountains and other sacrosanct spaces.
Sake brewing in historic times was thus an all-male occupation.

Sake is not only Japan's oldest industry but was for centuries brewed throughout Japan, wherever farmers
had surplus land and rice. In each village the sake brewer was thus the wealthiest and most prestigious individual. From what became in the nineteenth century large commercial brewers in the Kobe area to the small local brewers in the north and even south in Kyushu, sake was the universal beverage and was especially important at major events-- marriages, funerals, and end-of-season cereemonies following completion of the year's brewing.Inhabitants of every part of Japan were loyal to local brewers and were their chief markets. In part because of the antiquity of brewing and its concentration in the wealthiest families wherever it was brewed, the industry became closely embedded in proud family traditions.

 Looking at family occupations in Japan, I began researching five separate occupations: Jodo Shinshu priests, doctors and medical practitioners, weavers and dyers in the Nishijin area of Kyoto, used bookstore dealers,
and sake brewers. After preliminary research in each of these occupations, I was attracted especially to the sake industry with its ancient and familistic character. As a historian, I felt there was no other choice. What I learned was fascinating and led me on an odyssey throughout Japan, where I enjoyed the hospitality of
many brewers, sometimes for a week or a more as a house guest. Brewers, despite their secret recipes, were in many cases eager to display the details of this ancient art. Sake brewing, despite its dependence on the coldest winter season, was transported even to Hawaii, where it was brewed in refrigerated facilities.

In the early nineteenth century, the sake tax accounted for as much as seventy percent of the government's revenue. Over a hundred years ago there were 28,000 breweries scattered throughout Japan. Today the number has shrunk to something over one thousand. Sake as a beverage today competes with whisky beer, and even Western-style fruit wine in restaurwants. The tradition of brewing in a family dies hard. Many brewers comment, "I can't quit this occupation that was handed down to me from my ancestors." Though brewing may have ceased to be profitable, many continued brewing on a smaller scale, relying instead on other occupations such as real estate, opening schools, or simply renting out urban space for parking to maintain themselves.

My research was predicated on the assumption that I would write a history of the sake industry, and during the 1980's as I worked I intended to do just that. Something happened to change my mind. One large brewery in the Kobe area had two museums, one displaying traditional brewing tools and the other an art museum. The curator at the art museum showed me a large photograph of a woman who one hundred and fifty years ago had built her house the largest sake empire in Japan. A woman! And when I saw her face I knew I had to write her story. The result is historical fiction, incorporating information from all the breweries I had studied and imagining how a woman must have felt and acted in these circumstances, given all the prohibitions and women in this occupation. . This novel is titled The Scent of Sake and was published in 2009 by HarperCollins Avon imprint. It has also appeared in Spanish and German translation.