Japanese sake brewers see signs of long-awaited pickup in demand amid changes in eating habits

March 26, 2015

Japanese sake brewers see signs of long-awaited pickup in demand amid changes in eating habits

A special sake rice wine shop set up on the compound of Shinozaki Co.’s brewery was filled with customers trying to find their favorites on one day in mid-March. The occasion was an annual “kurabiraki” event held to introduce the year’s new brew. On the wall of the shop were an old photo and a copy of a winner’s certificate the company obtained in an international wine exhibition, but customers were busy looking for good buys, paying little attention to the items. 

The photo, taken in the 1930s, shows sake brewers standing in front of a brick chimney. "We don't have an original print of the picture. That's all we have,"said Hiroyuki Shinozaki, the owner and president of the company. "We were using coal as a fuel at that time, but we now use an oil burning boiler, and we have an advanced temperature control system." 
Shinozaki Co., located in Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, won the Trophy award from the International Wine Challenge of London in 2007. The competition organizer had launched the sake Japanese rice wine division in the year. 
This year's kurabiraki tasting event attracted as many as 1,600 visitors, including young women. This was another sign that Japanese are beginning to take a fresh look at "seishu" sake rice wine. Seishu has been regarded as Japan's "national liquor," but its domestic consumption has been on a steady decline since the 1970s, reflecting changes in people's eating habits, notably the so-called disalcoholization and consumers' preference for imported drinks. 
Domestic sake consumption for 2010 stood at 590 million liters, down about 30 percent compared with the 1980s. The number of operating sake brewers across the country declined to about 1,500, almost half the 1955 level. 
In the slumping years, consumption picked up from time to time following brewers' efforts to provide new products to meet consumers' changing tastes, for example, fruity or dry and smooth products, but the downtrend remains to be reversed. 
Sake was generally seen as tacky and unfashionable until recently. Such a negative image is beginning to be corrected. In the past 10 years or so, Japanese sake products, especially high-quality rice wine brands, caught on well with consumers in Western countries and in some Asian markets. 
Sake brewers also have had a follow wind at home. "Sake is cool." Unconventional consumers, such as young men and women, feel so. Consumers in their 50s and 60s or older follow suit, saying, "Why don't we try sake once again." 
Usaku Nakao, the owner of Ayasugi Co., a time-honored sake brewer in Fukuoka City, feels that the decades-long downtrend is coming to an end at long last. He recalls that domestic sake consumption for 2011 grew about 2 percent year on year. It was the year when widely scattered areas in northeastern Japan were hit by a devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami killer waves.
The mishap, which claimed about 18,000 lives, initially made Japanese hesitant about drinking, but a young sake brewer in an earthquake-hit area issued a message on the youtube site calling for supporting affected small brewers by drinking, not refraining from drinking. This gave a boost to sake consumption in Tokyo and elsewhere, as the disaster reminded Japanese of the importance of their traditional culture and habits. 

I was long waiting for you to return, having prepared sake with finely fermented rice, but it was all in vain. You, my love, did not come to me. 
 (A personal translation) 

This is a poem made by Lady Kuramochinouji and included in Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, which was compiled in the eighth century. 
Today’s sake brewing technique has come to an extremely high level, Nakao says. Sake rice wine is made from rice and water, coupled with “koji” rice malt and yeast. Rice brewers now have very advanced systems and knowhow for, among other things, controlling temperature for the fermentation process, polishing, or shaving, rice grains to have the purest possible ingredient, and selecting and culturing healthy, fine koji malts and yeasts. 
Shinozaki had an encouraging news from abroad this year. The company’s new “Hiramatsu” rice wine brand, launched on top of its flagship “Kunigiku” label, was served at the Japan Night event as part of the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. 
"The tide has changed,” said Michiaki Shinozaki, who assists his father as director in charge of management and planning. “We have inherited our (sake brewing) technique over years, but we were not necessarily active about selling sake products,” he said. “We have launched the Hiramatsu brand, but we couldn’t do such a thing until a few years ago.” 
Sake brands account for only less than 10 percent of alcoholic and other drinks turned out by Shinozaki. “Shochu” distilled spirits account for half of the total and “amazake” fermented rice-based sweet drinks 40 percent. 
Japan’s government is drumming up to increase sake exports to foreign countries. The campaign represents an effort to demonstrate Japan’s cultural assets extensively to the rest of the world.
Ambitious sake brewers are poised to take the occasion to increase their export business, though they have to overcome linguistic and other barriers to reach foreign consumers. In 2013, “washoku” traditional Japanese cuisines were recognized by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage. President Shinozaki, the seventh owner in the family’s 200 years of history, sounded cautiously optimistic about the future sake business in foreign markets. 
"Sake and washoku are a best combination, you know.” He said. "Sake makes washoku dishes even more tasteful, and people say sake rice wine can go with meat dishes, too.”
Ayasugi, whose sake business dates back to 1793, provides its products to Kashiigu Shrine, a local old Shinto shrine, for its rites every spring and autumn. The company and its sake brand are named after an old sacred cedar tree at the shrine. 
Ayasugi hangs a new “sugidama” ball of fine cedar branches at the entrance of the shop every year, as other brewers do. The item is an indication that “We have come up with the year’s new brew.”
"Sake is always beside us, Japanese. Served on various special occasions, sake enables us to share joys and sorrows all the time,” Nakao says. He believes that sake is a blessing from nature. “We hang the sugidama ball while thanking for nature.”

Spa resort town Beppu comes up with new attractive spots to entertain hot spring lovers

Feb. 27, 2015



Spa resort town Beppu comes up with new attractive spots to entertain hot spring lovers

Residents in Beppu, an internationally known spa resort, agree that the town owes its current prosperity to Kumahachi Aburaya, an early 20th century entrepreneur known as an idea man and a doer. Aburaya, who was good at advertising, launched Japan's first tourist bus service with charming young girls aboard as attendants, after refurbishing his hotel to a Western style one in 1924.
He also actively used the "onsen" spa logo mark and created an original catch copy, "Japan's three Number Ones. The best mountain is Fuji, the best sea is Setouchi and the best spa is Beppu." His innovative ideas contributed to disseminating the name of Beppu across Japan. Today, Beppu people are as active and innovative as the tourist industry legend in entertaining tourists with new attractive events and spots.
There are 12 courses of guided tours organized by local volunteers for a new herd of deep spa lovers, including night and gourmet spot tours. They take tourists to attractive locations, sometimes on the back streets, in the town's eight popular spa areas.
Another attractive project, which involves 88 selected hot spring baths in Beppu, calls for participants to try part or all of them one by one and have seals stamped on a booklet prepared for the tour at the baths they visited. When they accomplished all baths, they will be named an "onsen master" by the "Onsendo" project promoter, affiliated with the Beppu Tourist Association.
Onsen masters are awarded a black towel with a special logo as a token for the top rank, while blue, red, green and white towels are provided to other participants according to the numbers of hot spring baths they have tried.
At the top of the listed 88 hot spring baths is Takegawara Spa, a city-run facility which is housed in an 80-year-old wooden building and located in the busy Beppu Spa area.
Takegawara, which literally means "bamboo roof tiles," dates back to 1879, when the spa was opened near the sea shore for fishermen's families. Then, it became a bath for common use by local residents.
The two-story building with a high ceiling was registered as a cultural asset in 2004.
Takegawara was previously for residents only, but it is currently available for tourists, too. A woman at the reception kindly explains how to take a bath to unfamiliar visitors. "The temperature (of the bath) is sometimes 44 degrees centigrade, but it is 43 degrees today," she said. My wife had a chat with a young foreign woman  in the women's bath room. She introduced herself as a tourist from the Czech Republic and said, "I'll be back to Tokyo tomorrow to wind up a two-week tour of Japan."
When my wife referred to the names of famous spa areas in
Beppu, she appeared to be very much familiar with the spas in the town, among them Kannawa Spa. Asked whether it is not too hot, she replied smilingly, "No problem."
On an ally behind the Takegawara Spa building was Hirano Museum, an individually run museum with a collection of some 5,000 pieces of photos, posters, phonographic records and other materials about the town's history and culture. At the center of the main display room was a big photo of Aburaya, often called the revered old Mr. Kumahachi by local people.
He was a christian and went to the United States twice to study about tourism.  Standing beside his photo was a life-size picture of one of the female bus guides he recruited for the launch of the bus business.
Beppu, the second biggest city in Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, has a population of 125,000 and attracts more than eight million tourists a year.
Beppu and neighboring regions accommodate about 10 pct of Japan's 2,300 hot springs.
The eight major spa areas in Beppu boast of a daily output of hot water of 50,000 tons combined. In an attempt to demonstrate the attractiveness of the spas in Beppu and other areas, Oita Prefecture adopted the nickname "Onsen Prefecture" for its self in 2013.
Tourists, if lucky, may find a cute "onsen" logo mark registered by the prefecture at souvenir shops and other locations.
Of the hot spring baths in the popular Kannawa area, Hyotan (Japanese gourd) Spa has won a highest rating of three stars on the Michelin Guide. The spa boasts of an original spring water cooling system, which has made it possible to provide a 100 percent pure hot spring water by reducing the temperature of the water faster than ever, but with its rich ingredients intact.
The system is built with fine bamboo branches hung from an elevated wood trough, on which very hot water brought up from the spring source trickles down to be cooled to an appropriate temperature.
The actual cooling system is about 5 meters high, but a downsized model is placed in front of the entrance so that visitors can enjoy the facility as a foot bath. 
The "Yumetake" system, jointly developed by the spa operator and Oita Prefecture, is currently used at six facilities in Oita and Nagasaki prefectures.
The number of inbound tourists to Japan is on the increase in recent years, reflecting the government's policy of strengthening tourism as a growth industry and the yen's weakness against other currencies. But hot spring resorts in Japan are not necessarily successful in increasing tourists. This is partly because of diversifying tastes amid changes in social activities.
Beppu is more active than other spa resort towns, however. Its energetic effort to attract more tourists is expected to continue, as its people are willing to have more innovative ideas for the town.

Nagasaki revisited as shelters harboring secret Christians in feudal years

January 29, 2015

Nagasaki revisited as shelters harboring secret Christians in feudal years



Nagasaki, located in the westernmost part of Kyushu, one of Japan’s four main islands, has many faces in its historical background. Nagasaki City, the capital of Nagasaki Prefecture, is one of Japan’s two A-bombed cities, the other being Hiroshima. Nagasaki and Hirado, about 70 kilometers to the north, used to be “windows” for external commerce for about 250 years of “sakoku” isolation from the 17th century. 
Sites linked to secret Christians in the feudal years can be found in widely scattered areas in Nagasaki Prefecture.

Tabira Church, which stands on a hilltop overlooking Hirado Strait, was completed after three years of work in 1917 and dedicated in the following year. At present, 600 to 700 believers attend the church, though the number was once about 2,000, said an old man who was on hand to receive visitors at the church. “Our church will turn 100 in 2018, just three years ahead. So, we have to discuss where to build a monument (in commemoration of the centennial),” he said.

Christianity was brought into Japan by a Jesuit missionary, Francisco de Xavier, in the middle of the 16th century. Other missionaries followed suit and quickly won many believers among not only influential persons but also ordinary people in Kyushu and other parts of western Japan. But their propagation was banned a few decades later.

As Christians began to be persecuted, some of them gave up their faith, while others maintained their faith secretly at shelters. 
One can imagine the severity of the persecution by visiting a monument built in memory of 26 martyred Christians on the top of Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki. The so-called 26 Saints of Japan, including three boys and six foreign priests and monks, were taken to Nagasaki and executed there on February 5, 1597. 
Rites in memory of the martyrs will be held at churches across Japan, including Tabira Church, on the very day.

The year of 2015 is a special year for Christians in Japan. A group of secret Christians appeared at a church built for foreigners in Nagasaki and confessed their faith before a French missionary  on March 17, 1865, exactly 150 years ago. Despite the incident, the crackdown on Christian believers continued until 1873, when the new Meiji government scrapped the ban on the propagation amid criticisms by Christian countries. This eventually opened the way for Japanese Christians to build their own churches.

For Christians and related persons in Nagasaki Prefecture, this year will be even more special. Japan will formally recommend a total of 13 time-honored Christian sites, 12 places in Nagasaki Prefecture and one in neighboring Kumamoto Prefecture, this year as candidates for UNESCO World Heritage registration. Tabira Church, formally called Catholic Tabira Church, is among the candidate sites.

Tabira Church consists of the church building itself, a priestly house, front gate posts and an adjoining graveyard. Construction was carried out by congregation people, who carried up bricks, roof tiles, wood and other building materials from the sea. Lime as joints between bricks was made by burning seashell brought from the seashore. A kiln built for this purpose remains at an original site near the front of the church.

The red brick church building has a three-story front structure and behind it, a high arched, dome chapel with a beautifully painted interior. On top of the front building is an octagonal dome-shaped belfry, from which the bell is rung three times a day.

Visitors are received first by a statue of the Virgin Mary of Lourdes, built in front of the entrance in 1981. Then, they walk into the church and find beautifully decorated stained glass windows in the upper and lower sections and high above the altar. Those in the lower section depict the life of Jesus Christ from his childhood to death and resurrection. 

This year’s mass on the New Year’s Day brought together about 250 believers. As part of the mass, participants held a rite to celebrate the coming-of-the-age of two male followers.
According to a monthly newsletter published by the church, there will be no children who receive Holy Communion this year. “This is probably the first since our church started,” the author wrote anxiously.

The number of believers is further declining in the Tabira congregation, just like other Catholic churches in remote regions. As a result, the maintenance of the church is becoming harder. But the number of tourists appears to be increasing, since the proposed World Heritage registration of the Christian-related sites, including Tabira Church, became widely known last year. The encouraging news is expected to help Tabira congregation people to keep their faith and tradition from generation to generation over the years.

Japanese preparing for New Year’s holiday season in mixed mood

Dec. 28, 2014

Japanese preparing for New Year’s holiday season in mixed mood

With Japan’s economy coming to a crossroads to pull out of the years-long deflation, Japanese people are preparing for the New Year’s holiday season in a mixed mood.

Some of Japan’s major economic indicators, including the  closely followed Nikkei stock price index, are picking up, but many Japanese consumers are uncertain about whether the economy is actually on a recovery track, allowing them to loosen their purse string toward the year-end and New Year’s shopping season.
 The coming year of 2015 is a year of sheep, one of the 12 zodiacal signs in Chinese astrology. The sheep is a rather gentle animal. The saying is that big changes will occur in society in the year of sheep, with old things in people’s life to be replaced with new ones.
 In Japan, public offices and major businesses are closed for six days around the turn of the year--the last three days of the passing year and the first three days of the coming year. To be happier to holiday goers, the forthcoming six-day period is sandwiched by weekends on both side.
Shop operators are hoping that the longer string of holidays will help generate more consumer demand in a festive mood.
Food stores are filled with ingredients for “osechi” dishes for the New Year, such as beans, shrimps and seaweeds. But the yen’s depreciation in the past months has made imported ingredients costlier.
 In front of a florist on the Kawabatadori shopping street in Fukuoka, the most populous city in Kyushu, southwestern Japan, were a variety of New Year’s decorations and items, including “kadomatsu” pine branches with bamboos. At a nearby doll shop were miniature lucky figures of sheep.
A few beaming young girls were seen drawing fortune telling lots before a statue of the god of marriage on the street.

To celebrate the beginning of the new year, let’s accumulate happy things toward 1,000 years of prosperity, just like piling up sacred “sakaki” branches. 
(A personal translation)


 This is a waka poem composed by an unknown author and contained in the Kokinshu waka anthology edited in the 10th century.
Government people insist that the economy is definitely getting out of deflation, but critics say that the apparent improvements in economic activity, are benefiting only the rich.
The coming year represents the 70th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, which broke out between Japan and the United States and its allies in December 1941. Battles between Japan and the United States came to a point of no return in 1943, a year of sheep, when Japan started following a path toward a defeat.
 The forthcoming year of sheep is hoped to bring about happiness to as many people and as many regions as possible, closing　a division between the haves and the not-haves in Japan. 

Kakashi straw figure festival enlivens calm mountain village in southwestern Japan

Nov. 14, 2014


Kakashi straw figure festival enlivens calm mountain village in southwestern Japan

Yamakuni Town becomes a huge open-air theater of “kakashi” straw figures during the post-harvest season every autumn, attracting over 50,000 tourists from neighboring regions.

Visitors can find kakashi figures, which are equivalent to scarecrows in the West, standing here and there in Yamakuni, located in the central part of Oita Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan.
This year’s Yamakuni Kakashi World, the eighth of its kind, was launched for a one-month run late October, with about 1,200 vivid kakashi figures placed to welcome visitors in a nostalgic atmosphere in the rural landscape.

Kakashi display sites have been set up at 17 places mainly in harvested rice fields and parks. Themes for each of these sites change every year, and figures for this year depict such scenes as a wedding ceremony in the old days, an autumn festival featuring portable shrine bearers and spectators, a kid “kagura” play dedicated to the gods and a series of farm work.
Individually placed kakashi figures also can be found at empty lots and corners of gardens and elsewhere.

Yamakuni Town, currently a part of Nakatsu City, sees its population on the decline, down to approximately 2,600 as of March 2014. Villagers’ power put together for the annual event enlivens the otherwise lonely region.
Traditional kakashi dolls are those standing with a single leg and a straw hat in rice fields to dispel sparrows and crows.

The kakashi festival in Yamakuni dates back to 2003, when two old couples placed unique kakashi brides and bridegrooms on post-harvest fields in the back of their houses. People in the neighborhood followed suit. The custom then spread to other parts of the town, and the Yamakuni Kakashi Village event, then called so, started in 2007.

In front of the open-air wedding ceremony site at the Koyagawa district were two old women, who were on hand to serve hot tea and fruits to visitors.
“We learned how to make kakashi figures from the couples and started making kakashi dolls by ourselves,” said one of the women.

A kakashi display site in the Tsuyahime (Princess Tsuya) district features various scenes of rice growing, from horse-driven spadework and rice planting to harvesting. Among the figures there were kids playing with a big bamboo basket.

A tourist was gazing at the basket curiously, whispering to her friend, “I haven’t seen a bamboo basket this big. What was that for?” Their doubt was solved by an old farmer who was there to welcome tourists.

The basket, with a capacity of 7 koku (one koku is equivalent to about 180 liters), was originally used to contain cocoons, said the farmer. “People around here were raising silkworms until the 1930s, but the business ceased after that, because it became unprofitable,” he said.

At a garden in front of a farmer’s house in the Morizane district were kakashi kids climbing up a persimmon tree. “My wife is good at making kakashi dolls like those out there,” the farmer said. Kakashi figures have wires inside and so, their legs, arms and other parts can be easily bent to desired shapes by bending wires appropriately, his wife said. “Because I was tomboyish in my childhood, you know, I like making these figures,” she said smilingly.

Many villages and towns in Oita Prefecture have boastful unique products, but Yamakuni lacks strongly appealing, original products. Further, similar kakashi festivals can also be seen in other regions in Japan. But straw figures made by Yamakuni people are more real and more humorous. The kakashi works instantly remove a psychological barrier between visitors, mostly city dwellers, and villagers, generating a friendly atmosphere throughout the town during the festival.