Tsurunoe Brewery: A Family Business Where Women Play Key Brewing Roles
Fukushima Prefecture produces some of the best sake in Japan, holding the record, established in 2019, for taking home the most gold medals for seven years in a row at the all-important Japan Sake Awards (aka National New Sake Appraisal). Styles of sake vary across the prefecture, but one stronghold of ancient sake-making expertise is the western Fukushima town of Aizu-Wakamatsu. This is where Miyamizumi Brewery (maker of the Sharaku line of sake), which I mentioned in my January 25 post about Sequoia Sake, is located.
This week’s post is about another Aizu-Wakamatsu brewery, Tsurunoe, which is illustrious for a number of reasons. Established in 1794 its name is a reference to the town’s Tsuruga Castle and the brewery’s history as purveyors to the Matsudaira clan—loyal supporters of the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate—that controlled the region during the Edo Period (1603-1868). Tsurunoe’s Aizu Chujo line, or Aizu Lieutenant General, which is rich, complex, fruity and dry, is an homage to Masayuki Hoshina, the founder of the clan. His namesake sake took home gold at the Japan National New Sake Competition after it debuted in 1977, and has become Tsurunoe’s flagship label.
But what’s also noteworthy is the two women brewers who have helped make the small, family run traditional craft brewery a modern success. In 1988, Keiko Hayashi, wife of seventh-generation brewery president Heihachiro Hayashi, became the first woman in Fukushima Prefecture to earn a first-class brewing technician’s certificate. She spent 30 years in charge of making koji, the all-important sake brewing step that has been likened to the foundational “dashi” base, or blueprint of each sake. A sake’s koji in large measure determines the quality of the final product. Making it in the traditional way requires waking in the middle of the night to check on and adjust the rice’s temperature, a hard schedule to keep up for that many years while raising a family!
Keiko and Heihachiro’s daughter Yuri, like her father, graduated from the Tokyo University of Agriculture’s (Nodai for short) department of fermentation science, where she met her husband, Hirotoshi Mukai. When Yuri graduated in 1996 the brewery was suffering financially as Japan sake sales continued a two-decade decline. She stepped in to help out for what she thought would be a short period of time.
To attract a new following to their sake, the family came up with the idea of a woman-made sake designed for women consumers. The project was highly personal, and she and her mother agonized over creating a sake they could be proud of. It was the hardest thing she has done as a brewer, says Yuri. They both wanted to represent Fukushima, so they chose Gohyakumangoku rice grown in Aizu-Wakamatsu and the prefecturally developed Utsukushima Yume yeast. They harnessed the power of the cold climate and pristine groundwater that flows down from Mt. Bandai to brew an aromatic, soft, clean and dry junmai daiginjo.
At the same time she was working at the family brewery, Yuri enrolled in the prefecture’s vocational sake academy, one of a number of regional sake-making endeavors that help make Fukushima a top-producer of sake. Like her mother, she too, earned a first-class brewing technician certificate, the highest a brewer can aspire to. Fittingly, the Niigata Prefecture where she completed her externship, Ichishima Brewery, is proud of the fact that in 1979 it hired Kazuko Shiiya, the first woman to hold a first-class brewing technician’s certificate.
Yuri and her mother are their family’s first certified technicians. Before them, her grandmother’s contribution was to make meals for the brewery workers who back then lived at the brewery. I wondered if her family is especially enlightened in promoting equality of the sexes within the brewery (they are proud of having a number of women kurabito, or brewery workers, on staff). But Yuri says, “Rather than especially supporting women brewers, the family was in a situation where unless every member engaged in sake brewing, it wouldn’t get made. In small breweries, it’s not that unusual for all family members to help brew.” So while getting the highest license available to a toji might still be unusual, women, especially during the lean period beginning in the mid-1970s, could be found working as kurabito out of economic necessity.
While the sake that she and her mother created still hadn’t been named, Yuri decided that she wanted whatever its name was to be printed in the native Japanese syllabary, hiragana—not in Chinese kanji characters. Hiragana conveys a softer impression to the Japanese reader, and unlike kanji, has only one reading rather than multiple possible readings. But she didn’t know what to call it. It was Yuri’s father who suggested giving it her own name.
Although she is often referred to as the toji, or master brewer, of Tsurunoe, Yuri is reluctant to claim the title, because the person who officially holds that title is Yoshimasa Sakai, a decorated master who arrived as a seasonal kurabito in 2000 and assumed the position of toji in charge in 2003. In 2018 he was given a commendation as a modern master craftsman by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, and in 2019 he was awarded the government medal with yellow ribbon. “He is my cherished master,” says Yuri, pointing out that her job is actually to be in charge of the washing and steaming of rice.
About one-third of Nodai graduates are women, yet very few will go on to become kurabito, and even fewer will become toji, Yuri explains. The main reason is that unless her family owns a brewery, most women will not have the opportunity to sign up for the demanding, high-pressure job. Most women graduates, Yuri says, go on to work for food companies, especially companies that specialize in fermented foods such as beer, tsukemono (pickles), miso, soy sauce or bread.
When she first started working at Tsurunoe, Yuri wanted to make the best use of the skills she had learned. Her parents were the owners, and her younger brother planned to take over as successor one day. But his plans changed when he married, took a job in Tokyo and began raising a family. At that point, Yuri’s parents approached her and her husband about taking over.
The toji and the staff at that time had been working at the brewery since Yuri was a child, so rather than welcoming her, “it was probably more like I was allowed the opportunity to do the work,” Yuri says. “It was very hard to adapt what I had learned at school to the brewery. There were times when I was scolded by the toji. I realized that sake brewing is not something that one can do alone; it’s something done in collaboration with brewers.”
The reaction to her arrival from the community was welcoming overall. “It was very rare at the time for a brewery daughter in her twenties to make sake,” Yuri says. “But as I leapt into the world of sake brewing, many people cheered me on, saying, ‘This is a traditional livelihood that we want to see preserved.’”
Today, the Yuri brand of sake is nearly 25 years old, and Tsurunoe remains a small family business producing between 700 and 800 koku (one koku =180 liters, or 47.5 gallons). Only one percent of that is exported abroad. Keiko, 72, has retired, though sometimes fills in at the brewery sake shop. Yuri continues her work in the brewery and her husband Hirotoshi handles the business side of the brewery, plans new products and is the main taster of each sake before it is bottled. Toji Sakai is now 78 and still on the job. All are committed to carrying on the artisanal small batch sake-making tradition the Hayashi family has used for the past 227 years, “even if it is to preserve one sake brewery,” says Yuri.
When Sakai toji does decide to step down, Yuri will promote a successor from within the kurabito ranks to his position. “As the brewery owner, I think my job now is to create an environment where the brewers can work comfortably while protecting the brewery,” she says.
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