Sawada Brewery: Weaving Rope Baskets, Sticking to Tradition
While researching and writing our book, I spend a lot of time getting sidetracked and reading random sake info that has nothing to do with what I’m looking for. But it’s usually so interesting that I can’t help myself. One story that caught my eye recently was about Sawada Brewery in Aichi Prefecture (makers of the Hakurou line of sake), and its insistence on hewing to old, traditional methods of sake brewing.
Examples of these methods include helping to pick the wood that will be carved into planks and made into the brewery’s wooden koshiki, or rice-steaming vat, making all of its koji rice in 14” by 9” futa cedar trays that come with painstaking cleaning and repairing needs, and hauling in pure spring water via a two-kilometer mini-aqueduct erected by Sawada’s Edo-era ancestors. Emptying up to two tons of steamed rice from the koshiki requires one kurabito (brewery worker) to jump down inside it to help shovel the rice from the bottom. It’s exceedingly hot and hard work, akin, says sixth-generation president Kaoru Sawada, to doing heavy lifting in a sauna. For a number of years the brewery also used a beautifully woven Edo era-style rope basket to wrap and lift the koshiki.
Unfortunately, Sawada told me when I reached out to her, for the past three years the brewery has not used the basket, which is known as koshiki no nawamaki, or “rice steamer rope wrap.” We can blame climate change for this, because summers in Aichi Prefecture (which is almost right in the middle of Japan’s main island of Honshu, on the Pacific coast) have gotten so humid that the carefully woven rope basket became too mold-ridden to use continuously. After one season, brewers had to remove it to keep it from damaging the wooden koshiki itself.
But the story of the brewery’s quest to revive this tradition is still fascinating, so I’ll relay it here. The idea for bringing the nawamaki came in conversation with the company that makes Sawada’s wooden steaming vats, Fujii Seiokesho (Fujii Coopers Workshop, or Fujii Wood Work) in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture. The company is the last maker of giant kioke cedar sake barrels and koshiki, which, according to founder Takeshi Ueshiba, can last anywhere from 100 to 150 years. Ueshiba is also the inheritor of the dying craft of making these beautiful woven steamer baskets.
As an aside, Sawada also told me that in olden days, each region had coopers who made kioke and koshiki, and could repair them as well. But today the craftsmen at Fujii Wood Work are the only ones who can do the job.
“The nawamaki keeps the temperature of the rice stable, and makes it easier to handle the koshiki, Sawada explains. “Plus, it’s really beautiful.” So in 2017 she hatched a plan to have Ueshiba come to the brewery to teach the owners and brewers how to make the baskets.
As they went about sourcing the rope for the project, the Sawadas learned that it is now only made in one place, Ishikawa Prefecture, where it is used by gardeners at the sprawling, beautiful Kenrokuen Garden. The garden is known among other things for its yukitsuri, or “snow hanging,” which involves erecting series of rope supports that will help the branches of pine trees, azalea bushes and other trees withstand the heavy weight of winter snowfall without breaking. The yukitsuri are erected every year on November 1st. To see what an anticipated ritual it is, check out this rundown of the yearly hanging and removing of the ropes. Although the rope was sourced from Ishikawa, the tradition of the koshiki rope baskets, it seems, originates with the Tanba toji guild in Hyogo Prefecture.
A three-person team arrived at the brewery to lead the basket making: cooper Takeshi Ueshiba and his younger brother (both in their 70s) and a young craftsman from Aramasa Brewery in Akita in his 20s. Sawada organized a public event that allowed about 600 visitors to observe the basket-weaving process. In all, it took three days to complete. “Our thought was that if you learn how to do it, you can do it again,” Sawada explains. But because of the intense humidity, the nawamaki only lasted one year. The next year, the brewery repeated the basket weaving ceremony “to remember the technique,” says Sawada, who made sure the process was videotaped. She also received annotated photos from Ueshiba.
Although today you can find a small but growing number of breweries that are going back to traditional Edo or even pre-Edo period sake-making styles (Aramasa Brewery in Akita and Senkin Brewery in Tochigi are two), Sawada Brewery is rare in that it never really gave up these traditions. Sawada says it was her father, Kenichi Sawada, who made the decision to do this.
“When he became president close to forty years ago, all the big sake breweries were lowering their prices, so the competition for the smaller brewers was fierce,” she explains. Many had to close down. But a close friend of her father’s, Akihiro Yamada, president of the Aichi brewery Yamachu Honke (makers of the Gikyo brand) suggested, “Why not do something that the oote (large maker) breweries aren’t doing? So Kenichi Sawada continued his use of the old-fashioned wooden koshiki, the small wooden koji trays, and the mini-aqueduct for water. “Our nakama (circle of friends and associates) is really important,” Sawada says.
Close friendships among brewery owners is a thread that runs through much of today’s craft sake making, and many owners and owner-brewers credit the advice, information sharing and mutual support that they receive from their peers (not to mention healthy competition) for keeping their traditional craft alive through hard economic times. I’m glad that Kenichi Sawada had this kind of support, and hope that we see it carry on in the industry through Kaoru’s generation and many more to come.
If you happen to be in Ontario, Canada, you can order many of Sawada’s Hakurou sakes, including its prize-winning tokubetsu junmai brewed with its own Wakamizu rice, from the online SakeShop.to. If you’re in the U.S. … sorry! Sawada hopes that imports will be available to you in the near future.
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