The International Legacy of Sake Missionary Yasutaka Daimon
If one were to draw a Venn diagram of the westerners who have fanned across the world to popularize sake, the Japanese figure most likely to appear at the center of the many interlocking circles would be Yasutaka Daimon. He’s the sixth-generation heir to Daimon Brewery in Osaka, the man who put his small family brewery on the international map in the 1990s and began opening it up to foreigners when that was a radical thing to do.
The list of people whose careers he has helped launch or further is impressive: sake educator John Gauntner, Kinoshita Brewery master brewer Philip Harper, San Francisco sake retail trailblazer Beau Timken, and on the east coast, New York sake merchant Rick Smith. All of these people have spent time at Daimon Shuzo’s beautiful nineteenth-century brewery and garden in the foothills of the Ikoma Mountains.
Daimon seems to have been destined to play this role. During our visit to the brewery in the summer of 2019, he told us that as the eldest son of the family, he felt an “invisible pressure” to take over the family business. But sake seemed antiquated and uninteresting; what he really wanted to do was travel abroad. He left Japan in 1969 after his fourth year of university, and although he hadn’t quite intended to, spent nearly seven years wandering the globe, visiting 55 countries and spending an extended period of time with a group of Hindu monks in India.
He eventually returned to Japan, and did enter the family business in 1976, at first as sales manager. He brought with him an international perspective that led him to play a founding role in the Japanese Sake Export Association and serve as a spokesperson for sake at various JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization)-sponsored events to promote Japanese food and drink. He came to see his role as a kuramoto-educator who helps develop talent that will fuel the industry as it — by necessity in an era of shrinking domestic market share — becomes more international in scope.
John Gauntner, then a young sake fan, met Daimon at one of his lectures in Tokyo in the 1990s. True to his mission, Daimon befriended and encouraged Gauntner. In the early 2000s, he suggested that Gauntner hold the first of his sake professional courses at Daimon Brewery. Philip Harper began working at the brewery in 2003; when Daimon’s master brewer retired in 2005, Harper was awarded the title of Daimon Brewery’s toji, a role he held for two years.
As an American attending business school in Capetown in the early 1990s, Timken fell in love with sake when he met a couple of Japanese fishermen who liked to drink good sake. His new drink discovery made such an impact that he started keeping a diary of every sake he tried. “My journal exists to this day,” Timken says. “I have fourteen books filled with one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-ninety-six very specific sake reviews in them ... some reviews of sakes eighteen years ago read true today.” He adds, “Many folks can match music chronologically to their lives. I do the same with specific sakes.”
Timken embarked on an intense regimen of self-education, and opened his San Francisco shop, True Sake, in 2003. But he knew that without being able to get into a real Japanese brewery he was missing too much of the picture. That same year, he learned that Gauntner, a fellow Ohioan and sake lover, was thinking of launching a course on sake. Timken signed up, becoming the first of only three people in that historic inaugural class at Daimon Brewery. “I was John’s guinea pig,” Timken says.
Gauntner has now educated close to 2,000 people worldwide in his Sake Professional (SPC) and Advanced Sake Professional (ASP) courses. At the end of most of his SPC courses in Japan, Gauntner holds a grand finale dinner at Daimon Brewery’s charming restaurant Mukune-tei. “Daimon-san always goes around to every single student, sits seiza in front of them, pours his sake for them and listens — truly listens — to who they are and to their story,” says Gauntner. “He has incredible charm, and has the ability to make everyone feel that they are the only person in the room. So we all leave feeling it was the best night of the course, and massively impressed with Daimon-san and his philosophy.”
Timken was no different; he and Daimon immediately hit it off when they first met. “He’s like that crazy, magical uncle who tells wonderful stories out of the blue like how he rode his motorcycle through India,” he says.
Five years later, the two—Timken and Daimon—hatched a plan to offer a course for people with brewing backgrounds who would go on to do something in the industry. The course launched in 2009, and included Kjetil Jikiun, co-founder and brewer for Nøgne Ø Brewery in Norway. Jikiun met Canadian brewer Brock Bennet there, and the two went on to work together in Norway. Rick Smith, who took the course in March 2009 wrote this evocative set of blog posts about his time there. Writer and Japan Times columnist Melinda Joe says her time in the course “made me realize that sake is really all about the people — from the farmers who grow the rice, to the brewers and people who love sake as a drink and as an idea. It became very personal for me, getting a taste of how much work goes into making it and hearing the stories of the kurabito. Sake is about more than the pleasure it affords drinkers; it's a way of life. “
As brilliant as the course was, it was a huge undertaking that only lasted for four sessions in 2009. Then in 2017 Marcus Consolini, a former Hong Kong-based investment banker, came in as an investor, CEO and co-representative director to assist Daimon in the re-launching of Daimon Brewery. He suggested reviving the course, and adding more scientific content, including chemical analysis, to the experiential internship. The revised course started again in 2017 and the next year the program expanded to include field trips to a rice farmer, koji maker and sake merchants throughout the city of Osaka. This year, Consolini says the program — which takes 12 students a year spread out over three classes held in January, February and March — had a record number of more than 50 applicants.
Two of my ASP classmates, Joseph Cua and Tyler Staples, took the revived course in 2019. Pole-ramming the sake mash, Joe informs me, is not easy, so students were happy to hand the task off to their Danish karate-instructor classmate. Other memorable aspects of the course for Joe included how students offset the bitter cold of a sake brewery in winter by stuffing heat packs into their clothing wherever possible, and the fun of seeing his Indian classmates’ jaws drop when Daimon greeted them by singing a song he had learned in India in the ’70s. Joe was also impressed by the “breadth of skills needed by modern toji.” On a visit to a koji manufacturer, it was difficult for Daimon to translate the science-speak of the company’s head of research. Yet his Indian biologist classmate was able to easily read chemical formulae and explain the metabolism of aspergillus oryzae mold to the rest of the group.
Tyler says, “The greatest impression left on me was not realized until I returned to the U.S.” Exhausted after his travels, he recalls, “Like most travelers I set my bags down and grabbed a glass of water. It was that glass that was the rude awakening: It said, ‘You're home.’ I say ‘rude’ because it occurred to me how precious the experience at Daimon Shuzo was. That glass of water tasted lifeless, chlorinated, and sharp compared to the purity of the brewing water that we drank exclusively for a week. But in that same moment I was humbled and honored that I got to do something that so many dream of doing. The lesson that good sake is made with good water couldn't have been made more clear.”
The night of the class farewell party, Tyler invented a special sake cocktail, a sort of chai toddy made with the brewery’s Iwafune tokubetsu honjozo that was inspired by “Daimon-san’s time in India, the Indian delegation in the group” and the Danes’ taste for a warming drink during breaks. After finishing the cocktail making, Staples stepped outside to find a moment of calm.
“The courtyard in the brewery was peaceful and still,” he recalls. “There was so much history in that one space and for a moment I had it to myself. The moon was bright, the sky was clear, and I was witness to the eternal power of sake to bring people together.”
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