OKAYA, Japan — Not lengthy after daybreak, Japanese sake brewer Mie Takahashi checks the temperature of the combination fermenting at her household’s 150-year-old sake brewery, Koten, nestled within the foothills of the Japanese Alps.
She stands on an uneven slim wood platform over a large tank containing greater than 3,000 liters (800 gallons) of a effervescent soup of steamed rice, water and a rice mildew referred to as koji, and provides it combine with an extended paddle.
“The morning hours are essential in sake making,” stated Takahashi, 43. Her brewery is in Nagano prefecture, a area recognized for its sake making.
Takahashi is considered one of a small group of feminine toji, or grasp sake brewers. Solely 33 feminine toji are registered in Japan’s Toji Guild Affiliation out of greater than a thousand breweries nationwide.
That’s greater than a number of many years in the past. Girls have been largely excluded from sake manufacturing till after World Battle II.
Sake making has a historical past of greater than a thousand years, with sturdy roots in Japan’s conventional Shinto faith.
However when the liquor started to be mass produced in the course of the Edo interval, from 1603 till 1868, an unstated rule barred ladies from breweries.
The explanations behind the ban stay obscure. One idea is that ladies have been thought-about impure due to menstruation and have been due to this fact excluded from sacred areas, stated Yasuyuki Kishi, vice director of the Sakeology Heart at Niigata College.
“One other idea is that as sake turned mass produced, numerous heavy labor and harmful duties have been concerned,” he stated. “So the job was seen as inappropriate for girls.”
However the gradual breakdown of gender limitations, coupled with a shrinking workforce brought on by Japan’s fast-aging inhabitants, has created area for extra ladies to work in sake manufacturing.
“It’s nonetheless principally a male-dominated trade. However I feel now individuals deal with whether or not somebody has the fervour to do it, no matter gender,” Takahashi stated.
She believes mechanization within the brewery can be serving to to slim the gender hole. At Koten, a crane lifts a whole lot of kilograms (kilos) of steamed rice in batches and locations it onto a cooling conveyor, after which the rice is sucked by way of a hose and transported to a separate room devoted to cultivating koji.
“Previously, all of this might have been carried out by hand,” Takahashi stated. “With the assistance of machines, extra duties are accessible for girls.”
Sake, or nihonshu, is made by fermenting steamed rice with koji mildew, which converts starch into sugar. The traditional brewing approach was acknowledged beneath UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage earlier this month.
As a baby, Takahashi was not allowed to enter her family-owned brewery. However when she turned 15, she was given a tour of the brewery for the primary time and was captivated by the fermentation course of.
“I noticed it effervescent up. It was fascinating to be taught that these bubbles have been the work of microorganisms you can’t even see,” stated Takahashi, who could not drink alcohol on the time as a result of she was underage. “It smelled actually good. I believed it was wonderful that this glorious aromatic sake might be made out of simply rice and water. So I believed I’d wish to attempt making it myself.”
She pursued a level in fermentation science on the Tokyo College of Agriculture. After commencement, she determined to return house to develop into a grasp brewer. She educated for 10 years beneath the steerage of her predecessor, and on the age of 34 turned a toji at her household brewery.
Because the brewery enters the winter peak season, Takahashi oversees a workforce of seasonal staff and manufacturing ramps up. It’s labor-intensive work, hauling and turning giant quantities of heavy steamed rice, and mixing hundreds of liters (a whole lot of gallons) of brew. The grasp brewer will need to have the information and ability to fastidiously management optimum koji mildew development, which wants round the clock monitoring.
Regardless of the depth, Takahashi manages to encourage camaraderie within the brewery, catching up with the workforce as they hand-mix koji rice aspect by aspect in a sizzling humid room.
“I used to be taught that a very powerful factor is to get alongside along with your workforce,” Takahashi stated. “A typical saying is that if the environment within the brewery is tense, the sake will prove harsh, but when issues are going properly within the brewery, the sake will prove clean.”
The inclusion of ladies performs an essential function within the survival of the Japanese sake trade, which has seen a gradual decline since its peak within the Nineteen Seventies.
Home alcoholic consumption has dropped, whereas many smaller breweries battle to search out new grasp brewers. In accordance with the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Affiliation, in the present day’s whole manufacturing quantity is a couple of quarter of what it was 50 years in the past.
To stay aggressive, Koten is amongst many Japanese breweries looking for a wider market each domestically and overseas.
“Our predominant product has all the time been dry sake, which native individuals proceed to drink usually,” stated Takahashi’s older brother, Isao Takahashi, who’s in command of the enterprise aspect of the household operation. “We’re now exploring making larger worth sake as properly.”
He helps his sister’s experiments –- yearly she creates a limited-edition sequence, Mie Particular, that is meant to department out from their signature dry product.
“My sister would say she needs to attempt to make low alcohol content material, or she needs to attempt new yeasts -– every kind of latest strategies are coming in by way of her,” he stated. “I would like my sister to make the sake she needs, and I need to do my finest to promote it.”
