Sake and Sustainability: Sekiya and Kobe Shushinkan Breweries
Sekiya Jozo in Aichi Prefecture’s Shitara town. All photos courtesy of Sekiya Brewery.
In recent years I’ve seen a growing push to make Japanese sake a more sustainable product. In some cases sake makers are influenced by visits to European wine regions, where the concept of domaines and terroir seem like a great way to tell a story to perplexed foreigners who don’t quite get what sake is or how it works.
Some makers cite United Nations sustainable development goals, which have generated a lot of talk in Japan, or they are inspired by corporate sustainability efforts worldwide. These are trends that have gone mainstream as climate change has accelerated, and I’m happy to see more and more makers thinking about sustainability goals, whatever their motivation might be.
Shitara Town is surrounded by mountainous areas, which means that parcels that can be cultivated as rice fields are small and scattered throughout the landscape.
Many, of course, point out that Japanese people have practiced a no-waste, honor-nature ethic for millennia, and so it’s a matter of re-casting ancient practices to fit current fashion. This too, is true.
What’s interesting about these laudable trends, though, is that often becoming more energy efficient and environmentally friendly means reliance on high-tech methods that are at odds with the old-fashioned, hand-made sake brewing techniques that a lot of premium Japanese sake fans love. It’s something we all will have to grapple with in our own appreciation of sake and our buying choices.
These two articles from Sake Times, on Sekiya Brewery in Aichi Prefecture, and Kobe Shushinkan in Hyogo Prefecture, give you a sense of what I mean.
Sekiya Brewery president Takeshi Sekiya.
For Sekiya Jozo president Takeshi Sekiya, his move toward more sustainable practices was linked his desired to grow his own rice, the way European domaine-style winemakers do. During the Edo Period, Sekiya’s ancestors were appointed by the shogunate to distribute rice in this important trade route town. Today, the family still plays an important leadership role as one of the town’s biggest employers. The problem with adding farming to the brewery’s portfolio back in the early 2000s, though, was that there is very little young farming talent to draw upon. Shitara—the Aichi Prefecture town where the family brewery is located—has like so many rural areas, been experiencing a drastic decline in population, including farmers.
Of Shitara town’s 4,600 people, more than half are over 65 years old, and the farmer population has halved since 2005, from about 1,200 to only about 600 today. A change in the national laws governing farming had recently made it possible for corporate entities to grow rice, so that path was cleared for Sekiya. But seeing the population trends on paper and in his talks with local farmers, he knew he was going to have to farm in a different way.
His solution was to gradually take over the small parcels belonging to retiring farmers scattered throughout the area. Starting in about 2006 with less than two acres worth of rice paddies, he has expand his holdings to 257 small fields spread across more than 85 acres of mountainous terrain surrounding Shitara town. To make up for the lack of manpower, he has turned to “smart agriculture” techniques, specifically a system called the Kubota Smart AgriSystem, which allows farmers to control or monitor paddy water level management, yields, and agricultural equipment performance, all through cloud-based management on a smartphone or computer. Use of a near-infrared camera, meanwhile, helps assess a paddy’s fertilization needs.
Recycling rice by-products for use as cattle feed and using manure as fertilizer for fields are part of Sekiya’s holistic management of its land.
Sekiya also points out that thoughtful paddy management protects the local environment by storing water, mitigating heat and preventing flood damage and the depletion of groundwater.
Re-using and recycling products have always been part of agriculture and sake brewing, and Sekiya Jozo continues this tradition: rice bran, husks, and sake lees are used as cattle feed, while cow manure is recycled and used as compost for the paddies. The brewery’s chemical fertilizer- and pesticide-free fields have received organic certification. A program that encourages townspeople to collect aluminum caps helps fund the donation of wheelchairs to local eldercare and medical facilities.
When I asked Sekiya-san if there were any signs of a reversal of the declining rural population since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, he replied that there has been an increase in the number of Japanese who want to continue to work, but in the more leisurely setting of the countryside. This is a lifestyle that’s becoming more attainable as post-Covid, corporations shift to less rigid rules around the importance employees working at big-city company headquarters. But Sekiya notes that the efforts his brewery is making to keep employment in his rural town and maintain a vibrant rural life is just one small part of what is needed across the country, and that steady effort over time is what will keep rural towns alive.
To bring more equity to the workplace and compete with the nearby Toyota manufacturing plant, Sekiya has been ahead of government regulations by maintaining a 50 percent female workforce and introducing flextime for employees who are caring for elderly relatives.
At Kobe Shushinkan brewery in Hyogo Prefecture, thirteenth-generation owner Takenosuke Yasufuku first encountered sustainability initiatives in European wine regions, such as the efforts in managing water resources and reducing energy use in the Champagne region of France. He has expressed the opinion that “In the future sustainability efforts will be indispensable for selling sake overseas.”
So in 2005 he abolished the traditional intuition- and experience-based toji (master brewer) system of brewing for a data-driven, mechanized system that maximizes sustainable production. Each aspect of the sake-making process has been quantified and mechanized so as to eliminate human error and rationalize the process. Again, smartphones are the tools through which all of this is orchestrated and monitored.
Reducing the brewery’s use of the precious miyamizu groundwater that flows from the Rokko Mountains is a priority of the brewery. Over a seven-year period, the brewery tripled its production, yet with only a 1.4 times increase in the volume of water used, thanks to the implementation of water-saving rice washing machines and a more efficient bottle washing process, resulting in a sustainability award for the brewery’s achievements in water management.
This is just one of Kobe Shushinkan Brewery’s many impressive sustainability initiatives, but I wanted to single it out because it touches on the theme of leaving behind the most time-honored and beloved sake brewing traditions—in this case the mystique of the master brewer—for high-tech, more precise methods that save labor and energy use, yet result in equally or even more delicious sake.
All of the changes I’ve mentioned in this post are approaches that are in keeping with the need to prioritize sustainability, and are exceedingly practical solutions to the problem of rural Japan’s declining population and the shortage of both farmers and brewery workers.
It’s also worth noting that these changes are not lamented in any way by the brewery owners who adopt them as losses, only as improvements. They are much more likely to be mourned by the foreigner enamored with the romance of ancient Japanese craftsmanship but with little knowledge of the hard work involved in keeping a centuries-old family business alive. To me, the important thing is to maintain a scale of production where quality is not compromised and the human element of taste, judgement and the shaping of the final aroma/taste profile of a sake remains intact.
Before I end this post, I want to mention two more Sekiya-related tips. Almost a year ago, Sekiya Jozo launched a new project some of you might be interested in visiting when you make it back to Japan: the Houraisen Sake Lab. A sake brewery in miniature open to the public, you can watch sake rice being washed steamed, fermented and pressed, or take part in hands-on classes in making amazake or other sake-related activities. Since most breweries are not open to the public this is a good way for sake fans to get an up-close look at the brewing process. Sekiya told me that both Covid lockdowns and a winter of heavy snow in Aichi made the launch a slower one that anticipated, but that because there is a large population in the Chubu region where the brewery is located, he anticipates a steady build in visitors over time.
Sake Bar Marutani in Nagoya.
Here’s the second tip, an izakaya recommendation for your next visit to the city of Nagoya. Several years ago, as part of my reporting for this Air Canada enRoute magazine sake story, Sekiya-san took me to the brewery’s beautifully rustic izakaya Marutani, which is housed in a historic 150-year-old, restored warehouse about an hour-and-a-half drive west of the brewery. A more casual offshoot opened in the Hisaya Odori Park neighborhood of Nagoya in 2020. If you happen to find yourself in Aichi Prefecture when travel to Japan opens up again, put these places on your list!
In other sake news…
Our book, Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth, comes out in just under a month, on May 10. Thanks to robust pre-order demand, our publisher, Tuttle, has ordered a second print run. My deep thanks goes out to all of you who have lent your support. Supply chain issues have delayed the original March 8 publication date, but it’s almost here.
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