Sake as a Window on The World: The Aramasa Brewing Year Calendar
As this tumultuous and difficult year comes to an end, I’ve been sifting through and archiving the sake material I collected during our research trips to Japan. In the process, I came across a quirky and beautiful calendar that Yusuke Sato, the eighth-generation owner-brewer of Aramasa Brewery in Akita City, gave us during our visit in March of 2019, before Covid-19 turned the world upside down.
The calendar is organized by brewing year, so it begins in July, 2018 and runs to June 2019. (Here’s John Gauntner’s good primer on why the brewing year begins and ends when it does). It always seems a little sad to throw away a calendar with beautiful images and words, so I’m going to share a few of the entries here, and some of Sato’s reasons for choosing them.
The image-and-word combinations are a good illustration of how, in the hands of a thoughtful brewer, sake can generate a multitude of meanings, allusions and different types of beauty. “I selected these pictures and poems because I want people to recognize sake as one representation of the world, not just as a taste,” explains Sato.
Sato studied English literature at Tokyo University and before joining the family business in 2007, worked as a journalist covering left-wing politics and the counter-culture. He also developed an interest in organic foods and traditional Japanese culture. At Aramasa he revived and brought new cachet to the brewery and its Yeast No. 6; he’s made it a coveted brand in Japan and abroad.
Each calendar entry consists of an image and a quotation from a well-known or sometimes less-well-known figure, ranging from Kurt Cobain, Mother Teresa, and Steve Jobs to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, manga artist Osamu Tezuka and Ralph Waldo Emerson. They really do range far and wide.
For the month of August, Sato pays tribute to agriculture as the foundation of sake, and specifically the importance of seeds as the origin and carriers of life. In a photo of a ripening field of rice, golden stalks droop with the weight of their seed grains. The quotation is from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Everyone thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.”
September features a beautiful graphic image called “In Bloom,” which is the brewery’s corporate logo, taken from the name of a Nirvana song. Overlaid upon a background scattering of ghostly rice grains, the logo itself looks like an intricate mandala. Sato says its center represents Eastern thought, and surrounding that are successive rings. The first seems to evoke both digital-era circuitry and astrology—Sato calls them “scientific motifs.” The second, outer, ring is filled with organic, microbial shapes. The quote is from Kurt Cobain channeling Neil Young: “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” I interpret the picture and caption as an homage to both ancient wisdom and modern science, and the mystical enzymatic “blooming” that occurs when rice, water, koji and yeast meet to give birth to sake.
For the month of October, there’s a wonder-filled image of a human being who appears to be on the edge of a snowy world, gazing up at a magically illuminated night sky. The quote from poet Rainer Maria Rilke is about the experience of a child tasting sweet fruit:
Death and life in the mouth...
Read it from a child’s expression
If she savours them, it comes from far, from far…
Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth?
Where a moment ago were words, a flowing discovery
Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh.
What a great metaphor for the way that sake can contain worlds of taste and feeling, many of which cannot be captured in words.
But in the November entry, the mood turns ominous and downright frightening, with photographer Masao Horino’s black-and white image of pinafore-clad schoolgirls wearing gas masks, on parade in Tokyo. Taken in 1936, during Japan’s occupation of Manchuria and its imperialist expansion deeper into mainland Asia, it evokes an age of both aggression and anxiety, when citizens were encouraged to prepare for attack by poison gas bombs.
The caption is taken from animator Hayao Miyazaki’s film Porco Rosso: “Better a pig than a fascist.”
The film takes place about the same time that the photo was taken, but in Europe, where an ace WWI Italian fighter pilot has somehow been turned into a red pig. Porco Rosso, as he is known, becomes a bounty hunter who picks off flying pirates terrorizing luxury cruise ships in the Adriatic Sea. But part of the story’s complicated political backdrop is the rise of fascism in Italy. It sounds crazy, but like all Miyazaki films, it’s beautifully made, has its own internal logic, and is highly entertaining.
Sato sees this choice of image and quotation as a call for cultural freedom. “Sake is a part of the culture, but in the past it was made to help raise funds for war, and it was also used politically,” he explains. “Sake should be free.”
Not surprising from a brewery that emphasizes a return to Edo-era (1603-1868) brewing practices, a number of calendar entries place emphasis on originality and craftsmanship. There is a quote from the revered shrine carpenter Tsunekazu Nishioka, which accompanies a photo of Aramasa’s lovingly crafted wooden kioke fermenting barrels. The quote is a call to break out of the conformity of modern living—the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the way we think—to forge something unique and meaningful.
The January 2019 photo is of five bottles of the brewery’s special collection New Year’s brews, with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
And the December 2018 entry, representing the time of year when sake brewing is in full swing, consists of a photo of a brewery worker carrying a crate of steamed rice. The caption is a quotation from Mother Teresa: “It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing.”
Sato shared with me a copy of his BY 2019-2020 calendar, which is filled with more mind-expanding pictures and words. I hope to share it with you in a future post. But for now, I’ll say goodbye to 2020 (please hurry up and leave already!) and cast a look forward to 2021, when I hope we can all blaze our own trails and put as much love into our work as possible.
Wishing you all a happy and safe holiday! Rice, Water, Earth: Notes on Sake will return after the holidays on January 11.
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