Once taboo, more Japanese women are brewing sake

OKAYA

Not long after dawn, Japanese sake brewer Mie Takahashi checks the temperature of the mixture fermenting at her family’s 150-year-old sake brewery, Koten, nestled in the foothills of the Japanese Alps.

She stands on an uneven narrow wooden platform over a massive tank containing more than 3,000 liters of a bubbling soup of steamed rice, water and a rice mold known as koji, and gives it a good mix with a long paddle.

“The morning hours are crucial in sake making,” said Takahashi, 43. Her brewery is in Nagano prefecture, a region known for its sake making.

Takahashi is one of a small group of female toji, or master sake brewers. Only 33 female toji are registered in Japan’s Toji Guild Association out of more than 1,000 breweries nationwide. That’s more than several decades ago. Women were largely excluded from sake production until after World War II.

Sake making has a history of more than 1,000 years, with strong roots in Japan's traditional Shinto religion. But when the liquor began to be mass produced during the Edo period, from 1603 until 1868, an unspoken rule barred women from breweries.

The reasons behind the ban remain obscure. One theory is that women were considered impure because of menstruation and were therefore excluded from sacred spaces, said Yasuyuki Kishi, vice director of the Sakeology Center at Niigata University.

“Another theory is that as sake became mass produced, a lot of heavy labor and dangerous tasks were involved," he said. "So the job was seen as inappropriate for women.”

But the gradual breakdown of gender barriers, coupled with a shrinking workforce caused by Japan's fast-aging population, has created space for more women to work in sake production.

She believes mechanization in the brewery is also helping to narrow the gender gap. At Koten, a crane lifts hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of steamed rice in batches and places it onto a cooling conveyor, after which the rice is sucked through a hose and transported to a separate room dedicated to cultivating koji.

“In the past, all of this would have been done by hand,” Takahashi said. “With the help of machines, more tasks are accessible for women.”

Sake, or nihonshu, is made by fermenting steamed rice with koji mold, which converts starch into sugar. The ancient brewing technique was recognized under UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage earlier this month.