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 slender 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 mould generally known as koji, and provides it combine with an extended paddle.
“The morning hours are crucial in sake making,” mentioned Takahashi, 43. Her brewery is in Nagano prefecture, a area identified 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. Ladies have been largely excluded from sake manufacturing till after World Conflict 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 throughout the Edo interval, from 1603 till 1868, an unstated rule barred ladies from breweries.
The explanations behind the ban stay obscure. One principle is that girls have been thought-about impure due to menstruation and have been subsequently excluded from sacred areas, mentioned Yasuyuki Kishi, vice director of the Sakeology Heart at Niigata College.
“Another theory is that as sake became mass produced, a lot of heavy labor and dangerous tasks were involved,” he mentioned. “So the job was seen as inappropriate for women.”
However the gradual breakdown of gender limitations, coupled with a shrinking workforce attributable to Japan’s fast-aging inhabitants, has created area for extra ladies to work in sake manufacturing.
“It’s still mostly a male-dominated industry. But I think now people focus on whether someone has the passion to do it, regardless of gender,” Takahashi mentioned.
She believes mechanization within the brewery can be serving to to slender the gender hole. At Koten, a crane lifts tons of of kilograms (kilos) of steamed rice in batches and locations it onto a cooling conveyor, after which the rice is sucked by means of a hose and transported to a separate room devoted to cultivating koji.
“In the past, all of this would have been done by hand,” Takahashi mentioned. “With the help of machines, more tasks are accessible for women.”
Sake, or nihonshu, is made by fermenting steamed rice with koji mould, which converts starch into sugar. The traditional brewing method was acknowledged underneath 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 saw it bubbling up. It was fascinating to learn that those bubbles were the work of microorganisms that you can’t even see,” mentioned Takahashi, who couldn’t drink alcohol on the time as a result of she was underage. “It smelled really good. I thought it was amazing that this wonderful fragrant sake could be made from just rice and water. So I thought I’d like to try making it myself.”
She pursued a level in fermentation science on the Tokyo College of Agriculture. After commencement, she determined to return dwelling to turn out to be a grasp brewer. She skilled for 10 years underneath the steering of her predecessor, and on the age of 34 grew to become a toji at her household brewery.
Because the brewery enters the winter peak season, Takahashi oversees a workforce of seasonal employees and manufacturing ramps up. It’s labor-intensive work, hauling and turning massive quantities of heavy steamed rice, and mixing hundreds of liters (tons of of gallons) of brew. The grasp brewer should have the data and talent to fastidiously management optimum koji mould 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 facet by facet in a sizzling humid room.
“I was taught that the most important thing is to get along with your team,” Takahashi mentioned. “A common saying is that if the atmosphere in the brewery is tense, the sake will turn out harsh, but if things are going well in the brewery, the sake will turn out smooth.”
The inclusion of girls performs an vital position within the survival of the Japanese sake business, which has seen a gentle decline since its peak within the Seventies.
Home alcoholic consumption has dropped, whereas many smaller breweries wrestle to search out new grasp brewers. In response to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Affiliation, at present’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 main product has always been dry sake, which local people continue to drink regularly,” mentioned Takahashi’s older brother, Isao Takahashi, who’s accountable for the enterprise facet of the household operation. “We’re now exploring making higher value sake as well.”
He helps his sister’s experiments –- yearly she creates a limited-edition sequence, Mie Particular, that’s meant to department out from their signature dry product.
“My sister would say she wants to try to make low alcohol content, or she wants to try new yeasts -– all kinds of new techniques are coming in through her,” he mentioned. “I want my sister to make the sake she wants, and I want to do my best to sell it.”