The Story Behind the Sake Label: Terada Honke's "Gonin Musume"
The last time I wrote about the story behind a sake label it was Shimizu Seizaburo Shoten’s Zaku. This time I’d like to share the story of Terada Honke Brewery's “Gonin Musume,” or “Five Daughters” a rich, unfiltered and additive-free kimoto junmai sake.
Gonin Musume was the first natural and organic sake that 23rd-generation president Keisuke Terada made back in 1985. Today the Chiba Prefecture brewery—headed by 24th-generation owner/brewer Masaru Terada—is known for its passionate devotion to natural brewing methods using organic rice, native yeast and house-cultivated koji mold. Its Daigo no Shizuku sake is made with the ancient bodaimoto starter method, and its super-rustic, cider-like Musubi is brewed with germinated brown rice. I love Terada Honke’s robust and umami-filled Katori 90, made with organic Koshihikari table rice polished to only 90 percent. But as the brewery’s first natural sake, Gonin Musume holds a special place in Terada Honke lore.
From the early 1980s, owner Keisuke suffered from gastrointestinal troubles of unknown origin. After undergoing hospitalizations and surgeries he changed his diet completely, relying on natural and fermented foods. His recovery was so remarkable that it inspired him to write a book published in 2007, The Fermentation Way of Life. In it, he lovingly and playfully describes the teeming, invisible world of microbial fermentation. My favorite metaphor is Keisuke’s comparison of the human body with Tokyo’s Yamanote Line, the elevated train that forms a ring around central Tokyo. Keisuke pointed out that the line has “been around for a long time,” but its component parts have been replaced repeatedly over time. In the same way, our bodies seem to remain unchanged on the outside, but inside, “like the flow of a river,” cells and symbiotic microorganisms are constantly being renewed and replaced. “The movement of life is the origin of the energy of fermentation,” he wrote.
Keisuke truly loved microbes—after all, they had restored him to life! So he decided he wanted to return to the healthier, pre-industrial ways of sake making where no chemical inputs were used and the living microbes were not completely filtered and pasteurized out of the final product. It was hard in the early 1980s to find anyone growing pesticide-free rice, but through an agricultural magazine, Keisuke located a farmer in Yamagata Prefecture devoted to it. That rice became the foundation for his first throw-back sake.
Keisuke wanted to give his new natural sake a splendid name equal to its status as the first to express the brewery’s new philosophy. So he called upon the noted poet Bunmei Tsuchiya, who had been friends with his great-grandfather, 20th-generation owner Ken Terada.
Like many Japanese, Ken Terada was a devotee of the five-line form of Japanese poetry known as tanka. Unlike the three-line haiku format, which is usually dedicated to subjects related to nature and the natural world, tanka subjects can be wide ranging, encompassing nature, politics, romance, or everyday life. He was a serious enough poet to publish an anthology of his tanka poetry in 1911, The Tone River. In it he included a poem that extolled Terada Honke’s freshly pressed sake for its ability to take away the drinker’s melancholy. He and his friend Bunmei collaborated on a monument engraved with two of Ken’s poems, located on the grounds of Chiba’s Kozaki Shrine.
Ken Terada’s decision to name his poetry collection after the Tone River, which originates between Gunma and Niigata Prefectures and wends its way through Chiba Prefecture, was not surprising. After the once wild river underwent extensive engineering during the Edo period (1603-1868) it became a key mode of transport for the large volume of inbound goods needed to feed the booming capital city. Among those products were plentiful amounts of sake, made by brewing families like the Teradas that had been drawn into the commercial orbit of Tokyo.
By the time Ken Terada’s great-grandson, Keisuke, reached out to Bunmei in the mid-1980s for help in christening his new sake, the poet would have been well over 90. But he was still in good health, and happy to oblige. Bunmei recalled visiting Ken Terada back in the day when his daughters were young, and being amazed when a pack of girls seemed to tumble from the brewery house to greet him. He had written down a few recollections from that day: “To drink sake made at a lively brewery where there are many daughters—I’m sure it will be fun,” and “Pure, natural sake is the image of innocent daughters.”
Recalling that long-ago visit, and his amazement at how Terada Honke bubbled over with lively daughter energy, he suggested the name “Gonin Musume,” or “Five Daughters.”
At first, Gonin Musume sake was not easy to sell to Terada Honke’s local customer base. But in Tokyo and other cities, says current owner-brewer Masaru Terada, “people thought it was interesting because it had the taste of sake from the old days.” Today, Gonin Musume is made with a locally grown blend of rice polished to 70 percent.
Here’s the last thing I want to tell you about Gonin Musume. Although Bunmei recalled five daughters flying out of the house in a joyful pack to greet him decades earlier, Ken Terada actually had four daughters. His wife may have been among the crowd that overwhelmed the poet in a wave of welcoming womanhood, which he later remembered as “gonin musume.” In any case, it makes for a name that is both highly personal to the Terada family, and lends it the luster of having been bestowed by an esteemed poet and friend of the family.
I hope knowing this back-story makes tasting Gonin Musume that much more fun and interesting for you!
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