A C R O S S T H E L I N E S | Eric C. Rath

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Sake Journal (Goshu no nikki):Japan’s Oldest Guide to Brewing

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Abstract: This article presents the first English translation andcommentary on Sake Journal (Goshu no nikki), the earliest guide tosake brewing and one of the most important sources for understanding the history of sake making in medieval Japan (1192–1600).
Sake Journal includes six recipes for sake, five of which aretranslated here, along with the directions for pasteurization. Besides
providing insights into the technology and tools of medieval brewing, as a secret manuscript whose dissemination was strictly controlled, Sake Journal documents the professionalization of thebrewing craft and the popularization of certain styles.

at first glance, the ingredients needed to make sakeappear quite simple, with water and nonglutinous rice thechief components, although just mixing rice with water
will not produce sake. Unlike fruit, which can ferment
naturally even on the tree or vine, grains like rice needa catalyst to release the sugars in the starch to make themavailable for fermentation. Beer brewers turn to malt, butsake makers use the mold Aspergillus oryzae, called kōji inJapanese. Kōji produces amylase, protease, and about fifty
other enzymes that saccrify the starch in the grain, mustering it for fermentation. Fermentation also requires
yeast. Before the twentieth century, although they might
try to capture and save yeasts by soaking a rag in a tank ofbrewing sake and allowing it to dry, brewers largely reliedon ambient yeasts and probably placed a greater emphasis
on religious faith in the hopes that the almost magicaltransformation of ingredients into alcohol would happen.
But in the last years of the nineteenth century, Japanesescientists isolated sake yeasts, and then refined and cultivated them to make them available for purchase. Most
brewers buy their yeast today and have many varieties tochoose from. Besides rice, water, kōji, and yeast, saketoday is usually made with two more ingredients: lactic
acid and alcohol. Like yeast, lactic acid is a compoundthat occurs naturally, but rather than catalyzing fermentation, it is the byproduct of anaerobic fermentation whenlactic acid bacteria convert carbohydrates into lactic acid.
Lactic acid inhibits bacteria that might compete with theyeast and ruin a batch of sake. Premodern brewers would
not have had a scientific appreciation of lactic acid, butthey did develop special techniques to cultivate naturally
occurring lactic acid, as described below. Nearly all

brewers today bypass these laborious steps and simply add
a dose of lactic acid to their yeast starter. Many modern
brewers also add alcohol to their finished sake. When rice
was in short supply and its use regulated during WorldWar II, sake makers discovered they could increase thescale of their production by adding water and brewer’s
alcohol to their finished sake. Although in decline inrecent decades, the practice continues today. As of 2018,
only 23 percent of Japanese sake was produced without
added alcohol (Imada 2021: 4). Makers of low-end sake
add alcohol to cut costs, but producers of premium brands
use it to enhance flavors, they claim. To top off the list ofingredients, some brewers today add industrial sugar tosweeten their sake, whereas others use doses of aminoacids such as monosodium glutamate to boost the umami
taste (Roussille 2017: 183–184).
What is today a science was in the past a product of
centuries of trial-and-error methods. One popular origin
story of sake making in Japan is that it began with thecustom of virginal women chewing grains and using theirsaliva instead of kōji to render the sugars in the starchavailable for fermentation. “This primitive technique survived until the beginning of the twentieth century in Okinawa. By tradition, virgins prepared this type of liquor for
special religious ceremonies” (Ishige 2000: 1180). A longheld view among some scholars of Japanese folklore andanthropology is that regions far from the political centerare “backward,” holding onto customs that have disappeared in the mainstream (Rath 2016: 138, 150–151; Christy2012). Ishige, for instance, has equated modern ethnographic information with historical data to attempt toargue that sushi originated in Southeast Asia due to thegastronomica: the journal for food studies , vol.21, no.4, pp.42–50, issn 1529-3262. © 2021 by the regents of the university of california. all rights reserved. please direct all requests for permission tophotocopy or reproduce article content through the university of california press’s rights and permissions web site, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. doi: 10.1525/gfc.2021.21.4.42.

Modern sake brand names that include words like “beautiful
woman,” “maiden,” “daughter,” “bride,” and “beauty” could
be seen to evoke a similar gendering and sexualization of
sake, a fantasy of young women of yore chewing rice andspitting into containers in what could be mistaken for a sex
act. Such impressions contribute to sake’s reputation in
Japan today as an “old man’s drink,” despite efforts to market
to other consumers. Besides the fact that ancient Japanese
may not have viewed virginity as a specific life stage forwomen or men, the process of chewing grain to make sakeas described in the oldest Japanese reference, the eighthcentury Gazetteer of Ōsumi (Ōsumi no kuni fudoki), which
provides information about the eastern part of modern
Kagoshima prefecture, indicates that both men and women—neither of whom were called virgins—participated(Hiroyuki 2019: 19). To answer the question of whether
young women might have higher amounts of amylase or
yeast in their saliva efficacious for brewing, researcher Yamashita Masaru surveyed his students and concluded that there
were no differences in the amount of these compounds
among men and women of different ages, although there
were variations among individuals and whether or not they
had not brushed their teeth in the morning (1999: 41–43).
Charting the technological history of sake from ancient
to modern times deserves a much longer discussion, but thetranslation presented here documents some important
steps. Sake Journal (Goshu no nikki) presents six recipes formaking sake, directions to pasteurize it, and other notes.
Some indications about how to make sake can be found in
the tenth-century Procedures of the Engi Era (Engi shiki).
However, that source is a collection of laws and customs,
not a dedicated treatise on brewing. Moreover, the Engi
shiki lists only the ingredients for producing different typesof sake. It cannot be used as a basis for reproducing ancientsake recipes (Yoshida 2015: 56). Sake Journal is a more
extensive guide to sake making that allows us to take themeasure of the brewers’ art in the medieval period

A Secret Text
The anonymous author of Sake Journal presents the text as“an oral secret that must be kept completely private.”
Before the chemistry of sake making was understood, thetechniques to create it would have been discovered fromhard-won trial-and-error methods, making technical knowledge of how to brew sake precious. But secret texts did morethan simply preserve proprietary know-how in medieval
Japan—they also served as a way to license professionals.
An evaluation of the date of Sake Journal is beyond thescope of this article, but the cult of secrecy was much moreadvanced in the fifteenth century than the fourteenth. By
the first decades of the 1400s, professions from cooking to
the performing arts had literate practitioners who borrowed
longstanding strategies from religious lineages and mastersof poetry composition to create secret manuscripts (hidensho) with several aims in mind. First, as noted earlier,secret writings were a way for groups to preserve essential
know-how and thereby distinguish themselves from theircompetitors. While the exact contents of any secret writing
were not known at the time, literate society knew about thegeneral existence of secret textual traditions to the pointthat claims to have access to a secret body of knowledge
were almost required to do business in some fields. Second,
within the professions that owned them, secret manuscripts
could also serve as a means to designate and authorize
successors through their select dissemination. Accordingly,
some secret manuscripts, but not Sake Journal unfortunately, specified the names of their intended readers at thesame time that they warned against showing the text to
outsiders. Third, among the classifications of secret knowledge, transcriptions of oral teachings such as Sake Journal
were the most revered because they alleged to record information that had hitherto been restricted to verbal instructions. Yet, instead of replacing knowledge conveyed byword of mouth, secret manuscripts reaffirmed the importance of oral truths. Sake Journal, for instance, makes reference to additional “oral secrets,” reinforcing the notion

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In Japan, kuchi-kami-sake (“chewed sake”) was produced during
Shinto ceremonies and consumed quickly. Depending on the period,
the place and the specific ceremony, the work of mastication was
carried out either by young virgins, by the miko ([female] diviners andguardians of the sanctuary), or by the whole village. (2017: 16)(1192–1600). A copy in the collection of the University ofTokyo’s Historiographical Institute, which dates to 1566, isthe oldest extant version of Sake Journal, but the work may
have been composed as early as 1355 or 1489, depending on
how one interprets the calligraphy for the date on the manuscript. As preface to the translation below, a few background observations about the text’s history and contents
are needed to explain its significance.

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existence of similar dishes in remote areas of Thailand andLaos today (Rath 2021: 37). Consequently, Ishige’s comments could be meant to be read backward historicallyto conclude that Okinawa preserved customs lost on themain islands and that virgin girls chewed and spat theearliest sake in Japan. That interpretation seems to haveswayed sake expert Gautier Roussille, who writes:

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that the most secret and important facts should never be
written down. This strategy ensured that living masters werethe ultimate and final arbiters of knowledge (Rath 2004:
49–52; 2010: 54–55). Such hierarchies of written and oral
secrets are still maintained in schools of the performing arts
in Japan, with the tea ceremony being the foremost example. The supposed existence of secret oral knowledge
unlocking the deepest meanings and techniques means thattea masters or the heads of schools of flower arrangement orother schools of traditional arts can maintain their authority
in an age when anyone can now read the “secret” writingscomposed centuries ago.
Sake Journal reaffirms the importance not just of oral
instructions but also of bodily learning for sake brewing. As
the directions below reveal, successful brewers had to beable to use their senses to judge the taste and appearance of
sake, from the clarity of the water used to wash the rice tothe action of the yeast in the ferment to the correct temperature for pasteurization. Consequently, Sake Journal
provided guidance for gauging temperatures by touchalone. The master brewer also had to keep seasonality andweather in mind since environmental factors could affectthe outcome of the brew.
As a manuscript that depended on secret professional
expertise, oral tradition, and bodily learning to make it
understandable, Sake Journal presents some challenges forreaders today, and for the translator. I referenced three modern commentaries on the text, and often found variation in
how the original was interpreted, even on such basic mattersas to whether recipes required brown or polished rice.1
Moreover, several of the processes described in the text completely confound modern scholars. One step, called Shirotsuki (白次), might suggest polished rice, but the purpose isunclear. Most scholars omit the passage entirely from theirstudies of Sake Journal, but Matsumoto Buichirō proposes
two possibilities: one that shirotsuki is a recipe for making
dumplings, and the other that it is a method of milling rice.
In either case, the directions indicate “kneading something
to a consistency similar to wheat dough and adding lime
from a dye store,” an ingredient especially puzzling for sakemaking (Kondō 1893–1897: 33). Directions for a sake called
Kikaki (きかき) are equally as perplexing. Not only has noone identified the meaning of this term, but the purpose of
the directions, which guide the reader to prepare brown rice
at a high temperature, also remain cryptic. My translation
below certainly preserves that mystery. However, in otherinstances where the meaning is not ascertainable, I haveomitted those passages. The absent sections appear at theend of the manuscript and are in some instances too blurred

to read in the original. They include a shopping list ofingredients—mioga, mulberry, and cypress leaves—that
might be part of a fragment for a recipe for vinegar, andan unusual recipe for chrysanthemum sake (kikuzake, 菊酒).
In most instances, this beverage drunk on the ninth day of
the ninth lunar month simply indicates a chrysanthemum
flower added to a cup of sake. Chrysanthemum sake wasconsidered to be a tonic against bad luck and a medicine toensure longevity, following a Chinese legend in which thedrink granted immortality (Ogura, Komatsuzaki, and Hatae
2003: vol. 1, 65). The recipe in Sake Journal suggests adding
actual flowers to the brew, but the directions are unfortunately too garbled to make sense of, so I have omitted them.

The Recipes for Sake
While translated here as Sake Journal, the title of themanuscript comes from the name of the first recipe fora sake called Goshu (御酒).2 Goshu was a thick, sweet
sake made with a relatively large initial ratio of kōji torice, approximately 60 percent according to the directions, as compared to the 20 to 25 percent used today.
The “Go” in the title is an honorific—one usually nottranslated—but Goshu was brewed for the emperor’s use
for seasonal celebrations in the ancient period (eighth totwelfth centuries). However, the version in Sake Journal
is different from that of the ancient period as described in
the Procedures of the Engi Era. The ancient version used
a method called shiori in which rice, kōji, and water wereadded to previously made and pressed sake up to threetimes as a way of raising the alcohol content. Sake Journal, by contrast, adds the ingredients to the sake while itis still brewing (Yoshida 2015: 58; Yoshida 2016: 44). By
the early modern period (1600–1868), brewers added two
more additions of ingredients to the starter, and that is
the way sake is still made today. Thus, Sake Journal
documents the transition from the ancient method ofshiori sake making to a more modern one. Modern
brewers produce sake at 20 percent alcohol by volume(ABV), which they water down to about 15 percent; however, we can only guess at the strength of Goshu and theother medieval sake.
Two other recipes for sake purport to be in styles produced at temples. Japanese temples had been brewing sakesince as early as the eighth century and were at the forefrontof sake brewing by the sixteenth century (Katō 1989: 19).
Amano-style (あまの) sake refers to the brand made at Amanosan Kongōji, a temple in Kawachi province (modern

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lees in a cloth bag and either hanging the bag to allow theliquid to drip out or applying force to the bag to press it out.
After pressing, medieval brewers understood that they could
add a little charcoal to their pressed sake to separate theliquid from the solids further, a clarification technique thatappears in written records from the fourteenth century(Roussille 2107: 18). Unfortunately, Sake Journal sheds nolight on these pressing and fining methods.
Nerinuki was one of several different types of white sakein premodern Japan. At the lower end were the sakes
called jokushu or dakushu in the medieval period andrenamed doburoku in the early modern era. When thegovernment began taxing sake in the Meiji period (1868–1912), it considered all unfiltered sake to be homemade
and hence bootleg doburoku and prohibited it because
presumably it had been made without paying the proper
licensing fees and taxes. The ban on cloudy sake lasted
until 1964. However, white sake had special prominence
before the Meiji period. The white sake called shiroki wasused for imperial enthronement ceremonies (daijōsai),
where it was served in conjunction with black sake (kuroki) darkened with ash.4 A different white sake, writtenwith the same characters as shiroki but pronounced shirozake, was made from a blend of glutinous rice and nonglutinous rice. Hakata (in modern Fukuoka prefecture)
and Bungō (modern Ōita prefecture) were famous for it(Matsumoto 1979: 750).
Perhaps because of the many varieties of white sake inpremodern times, the one described in Sake Journal has
a prestigious name to distinguish it. Nerinuki was thename for a silk fabric made crisp, light, and glossy byremoving the protein sericin in the silk by submerging itin an alkaline solution, usually ash, which also brightened
any dye colors used on the fabric. Nerinuki silks weremuch in vogue in the era when Sake Journal was created.
They were used for short-sleeved kimono (kosode) and theelaborately dyed garments worn by powerful warlords suchas Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Nerinuki sake is mentioned inseveral fifteenth-century diaries.5 It seems the glossy white
appearance of the sake gave rise to the name, at leastaccording to the theory of the noted philosopher and botanist Kaibara Ekiken (1630–1714). Writing about nerizake,
which was another name for nerinuki, in the Latter Gazetteer of Chikuzen (Chikuzen zokufudoki), Kaibara
observed: “We do not know when this sake originated, but
the sake’s appearance like glossed silk gave rise to thename.” Kaibara elaborated that there were two versionsof this sake. The first was called nerizake because of theway the liquid was separated from the solid dregs when the45
GASTRONOMICAOsaka prefecture). Amano sake was a famous style, one said
to have been a favorite of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598),
the warlord who unified Japan in 1590 (Yoshida 2015: 102–
103).
The other temple sake in Sake Journal, Bodaisen, can betranslated as “Font of Enlightenment” (菩提泉). The namerefers to the Bodaisen River near Shōryakuji temple. Shōryakuji, located five kilometers south of Nara City, wasa branch of Nara’s Kōfukuji temple. Amano sake was a winterbrew using brown rice, but Bodaisen could be brewed in thewarmer months and made with polished rice using a method
called “Enlightened Starter” (bodaimoto) in which steamed
rice is placed in a cloth bag or a wicker basket and thensubmerged in uncooked rice and water for several days. The
Bodaimoto method produces lactic acid, which as noted earlier helps to eliminate bacteria harmful to sake brewing.
Brewers continued using variations on the Bodaimoto
method until the 1920s (Kondō 1984: 44). Today, only a few
sake makers take this step, preferring instead to add lactic
acid directly, an innovation discovered in 1910. Due tochanging economic conditions in the late sixteenth century,
such as the loss of income from agricultural landholdings
and the transition to a new political order that authorized
only artisans and merchants to engage in manufacturing andtrade, temples ceased brewing sake in the early modern
period; but Shōryakuji has revived its tradition of Bodaimoto
brewing. In 1998, the temple received a license from the
Nara prefectural government to produce sake (Katō 1990:
537). Instead of opening its own brewery, the temple partners
with local sake makers who create a small batch of Bodaimoto starter each January on the temple grounds. The
brewers then take this starter to their own breweries to finish
making the sake, and the temple sells these brands on site.3
One other element distinguishes the Bodaisen recipe fromthe previous ones in Sake Journal: Bodaisen uses a lower
ratio of kōji to rice, which would have produced a stronger
tasting, more acidic sake (Katō 1990: 50–51).
The fourth sake, Glossy Silk (Nerinuki, ねりぬき), also
makes uses of the Bodaimoto method but directs that thecooked rice be soaked for seven days instead of three. Nerinuki was a type of “white sake” (shirozake) similar to themodern “lightly or unfiltered cloudy sake” (nigorizake) thatretains some of the lees (Roussille 2017: 191, 245). The cloudy
appearance of Glossy Silk must have set it apart from theother sake in Sake Journal, although the text does not provide any indication about how all the sakes were finished,which would have played a key factor in their appearance.
Finishing involves separating the liquid from the solids, a taskthat begins with pressing the sake by placing the sake andWINTER 2021
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sake was pressed. Presumably, some of the solids remained
floating in the sake to give the sake a whitish, glossy lookcomparable to a modern nigorizake. The second type ofnerizake he identifies, which he calls the “authentic” version, combined glutinous and nonglutinous rice, similar to
the aforementioned shirozake. In fact, Kaibara seems to beequating nerizake with shirozake because he identified thebeverage as a specialty of a city in his home territory,
Hakata, which also produced shirozake. Kaibara braggedthat brewers from neighboring lands came to Hakata tolearn how to make it. Nerizake was the variety that thewarlord controlling Hakata gifted to the shogun annuallyin the early modern period, another sign of the sake’s fameand quality (Hioki 2005: vol. 5, 236). Today, Wakatakeya
Brewery in Kurume City, Fukuoka, produces a nerizakethat it advertises as a revival of the medieval sake. Packaged in a 500-millimeter container that looks similar toa milk bottle, the beverage has the appearance and consistency of a yoghurt drink, making it much thicker thana typical nigorizake, and with a much lower alcohol content (3–4% ABV).6
To Kaibara’s list we can add a third type of nerizake froma recipe in Tales of Cookery (Ryōri monogatari 1643), the firstprinted cookbook for a general readership. The directions
read: “Add white sugar to an egg and mix it well with coldsake. Serve hot” (Issunsha 1985: 72). The egg was likely raw
when added to the sake but cooked when the beverage was
warmed. This recipe was one of nine directions in the cookbook for serving sake with different flavorings that soundtoday like remedies for hangovers.
Another element that made Glossy Silk a prestigious
sake was that it used polished rice where the recipe for
Amano sake in Sake Journal called for brown rice. Brown
rice is generally not used for commercial sake today. In
fact, the extent to which the white rice is milled is mainly
what legally defines various grades of sake, with the mostrefined versions (daiginjō) featuring rice in which at least
50 percent of the kernel has been polished away. The useof brown rice and wild yeasts would have given medieval
sake a much rougher and tangier flavor profile thancommercial sake today. Of course, the “white” rice mentioned in the Sake Journal recipes would have also beenless polished than even modern table rice. While we do
not know the exact milling rates to be used for therecipes in Sake Journal or in the medieval period, in theearly modern period the scholarly consensus is that people living in cities ate rice that was 70 percent milled,
meaning it retained 30 percent of the bran, compared tomodern table rice in which the bran is completely

polished off. City dwellers in early modern times ate 70
percent milled rice only after the advent of milling shops,
which opened around 1650. These milling shops
employed standing mortars (fumiusu) that greatly facilitated the speed and the extent to which the rice could bepolished (Rath 2016: 72, 74). Medieval sake brewers
would have had to rely on a wooden mortar and a large
pestle to hand mill their rice, a much more laborious
method that could not easily yield highly polished rice.
In other words, the white rice used for the recipes in Sake
Journal would likely have had more bran and lookedbrowner than modern table rice.
Besides omitting information about milling rice and fining the sake, the recipes in Sake Journal skip several othercrucial steps. In describing the brewing process today,
brewers often use the shorthand expression kōji, moto, tsukuri. Kōji making is the process of spreading the kōji moldon steamed rice and helping it propagate through controlling for temperature and manipulating the rice by hand,a process that takes forty to sixty hours. The recipes in Sake
Journal assume readers know how to create kōji and will
factor in the time required to make it. So, recipes instead
focus on how to prepare the “fermentation starter mash”(moto), creating an environment rich in lactic acid andwhere the kōji has started saccrifying the rice. Interestingly,
the recipes call this stage tsukuri, a term that today designates the stage when sake is fermenting. Further study ofthe historical changes in the meanings of these terms iswarranted, but the shift in their meaning might reflect
a greater understanding of the fermentation process requiring different terms—moto and tsukuri—to differentiate thestages when the yeast is active, consuming sugars and producing alcohol. Although the meaning of these technicalterms has obviously changed over time, I have noted themin parentheses in the translation for the historical specifics
they provide.

Pasteurization
In addition to the sake recipes, Sake Journal describes
methods of pasteurization centuries before Louis Pasteur(1822–1895) experimented with heat to kill bacteria in winein the 1860s.7 While premodern sake brewers would nothave understood the science behind how heat eliminates
bacteria, kills yeasts, and stops fermentation, they knewthat raising the temperature of sake did extend shelf life.
Lacking modern thermometers, medieval brewers reliedon sensations of temperature that differed according to theAmong the insights one can gain by reading the recipes in
Sake Journal is a greater understanding of the tools and technology at the disposal of the medieval brewer, although thespecialized terminology is not always clear. For example,
some of the recipes call for using a vessel (こか) that could
be read as koka, indicating a large wooden bucket, or koga,
suggesting a ceramic container. The recipe for Amano sakebegins with creating a starter (called a shubo or moto today) ina wooden bucket and then combining it with more ingredients in a ceramic vessel called a kame. A kame was the maincontainer for medieval brewers and designated a large
ceramic vessel with a capacity of one koku (180 liters) that
had to be partially buried in the ground for stability. Somebrewers employed kame with a capacity two or three times
that size, but larger vessels were expensive and even more
unwieldy, so typical brewers used hundreds of separate onekoku kame in their operations (Yunoki 2005: 35). Since therecipes in Sake Journal call for fashioning a lid for the kame,the ceramic vessels apparently lacked lids, or else the brewers
in some instances preferred using lids made of matting thatwere not airtight. If the brewers reused their mats, then themats might have trapped yeasts from previously made batchesof sake and could thereby serve as a way to introduce theseyeasts to a new batch. Undoubtedly, that recipes in Sake
Journal call for initially using eighteen liters of rice was
because this amount was one tenth of the capacity of themedieval kame. Premodern Japan’s base ten system for capacity, which was the normative measurement for cooking andbrewing recipes in premodern times, made adjusting the sizeof recipes relatively easy. Accordingly, the measurements in
Sake Journal are in terms of capacity, not weight. Modernsake brewers still measure their production in volumetricterms of koku, and the oversized traditional sake bottles one
finds in Japan with a 1.8-liter (one shō) capacity are yet
another holdover of premodern units of measurement. Other
tools mentioned in the Sake Journal recipes include a zaru,
which usually designates a bamboo colander but here suggests
a wicker basket that can hold cooked rice and be submergedin water. A rice caldron called a kama, usually intended forcooking grain or heating water in a home on top of a mud or
ceramic stove (kamado), is also mentioned as is a “stirrer”(neriki) used to churn the brew.9 Early modern brewers stirred
their sake with long wooden oars called kai or kaibō, andmedieval sake makers probably used something similar. During fermentation, the grains settle at the bottom of the container, and mixing the ferment with the oars releases trappedcarbon dioxide and adjusts the temperature.

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change of seasons. Sake Journal advises heating the sake
until it is “warmed for drinking” in the late spring (about
40 C [104 F]) but raising the temperature until it was “hotto the touch” (around 60 C [140 F]) in the summer (Matsumoto 1979: 749). But the directions are even more precise,
specifying the twenty-fifth day of the fourth, fifth, and sixth
lunar months as the correct days for pasteurizing. Thesemonths, which correspond roughly to May through July,
were the early and mid summer and so a hotter period whensake would have a greater tendency to go bad. Since brewers
even today pasteurize their sake more than once, it is logicalthat medieval producers set aside specific days to pasteurize
their sake and to clean the containers it had been stored in.
The twenty-fifth day of the month might have had special significance for sake brewers for several reasons. Buddhists believe there are twenty-five realms of existence, andworking to help humanity transcend suffering are twentyfive bodhisattvas. So, the twenty-fifth day may have simply
been considered a lucky day. The twenty-fifth day of themonth was also important for the deity of learning (Tenman Tenjin), the divine form of the ancient statesman andpoet Sugawara no Michizane (845–903). In early modern
Japan, temple schools closed their doors on the twentyfifth day to honor Tenman Tenjin.8 It is tempting to imagine the predecessors of these early modern school children
heading to the sake brewery on their day off to help pasteurize sake. However, the connection to the importanceof the twenty-fifth day of the month and the deity of learning might have something more to do with kōji. In medieval Kyoto, guilds backed by Kitano Shrine, where
Tenman Tenjin was the main deity, held a monopoly inthe capital on the powdered kōji used for sake and otherpurposes (Gay 2001: 43). So, drawing attention to thetwenty-fifth day may have been a way for medieval brewers
to acknowledge the importance of kōji and, by extension,
the power of Kyoto’s kōji guilds, which may have been toobusy enjoying the day off or involved in ceremonies to sellkōji those days.
However, since sake brewing occurred year-round in
the medieval period, it is likely that pasteurization did aswell. Sake Journal offers another set of directions for pasteurization that could be used throughout the year. The
medieval process of pasteurization would have helped tostabilize the sake, but it would have also lowered the sake’s
alcohol content because heating the sake releases alcohol.
To avoid this problem, brewers today pasteurize their sakein a contained environment that prevents alcohol fromvaporizing, such as by submerging bottled sake in a warm
water bath.

F IG UR E 1: Sake bottles and mushrooms, at a standing bar in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture, 2018.
photograph by eric c. rath © 2018

Sake Journal (Goshu no nikki) Translation
Sake Journal is an oral secret that must be kept completely
private.

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Allow 18 liters (1 to) of white rice to soak overnight in water;then steam it thoroughly. Add 10.8 liters (6 shō) of kōji atbody temperature. Add the water used for soaking the rice
the previous evening to the ferment (tsukuri). That water
should be at body temperature, and 18 liters of it should
cover [the ferment]. Cover the bucket with a mat for a lid
and allow it to rest for about six days. Once the fermentationis activating in the bucket, mix and stir it. Make sure to mix
carefully including the ferment on the edges of the bucket.
Stir it twice at midday. When the brew becomes sharp tasting, add kōji mixed with water (mizu kōji).10 Then steam 18
liters of rice thoroughly as before and cool it completely. Add
the rice into the center of the fermenting sake. After that, stirit twice daily. If it settles, churn it with the stirrer. Cover witha lid you have made. There are [additional] oral secrets.

a man o sa ke

Let 18 liters of brown rice soak overnight.11 Steam it thoroughly on the next day. Since this a sake brewed in winter,allow the rice to cool to body temperature and combine itwith 10.8 liters of kōji, placing it in the ferment. Measure andadd 18 liters of water, cover with a mat for a lid and allow to

rest. Within about four or five days, when the grains of therice begin to dissolve and the fermentation occurs, stir it
gently. When it begins tasting fermented, take 18 liters of
rice, soak it overnight, and steam it well on the following
day; then cool it thoroughly on a straw mat. Combine thiswith 10.8 liters of kōji and add it to the sake made earlier.
Add 18 liters of water and stir. When the fermentation progresses and it starts to bubble, divide it into two vessels(kame). Then add 5.6 liters (3 shō) of steamed rice to each
vessel. The kōji [added] is 10.8 liters, as before. Because thisis a transcript of an oral instruction, it must remain secret.

f on t o f e n li g ht e n me n t ( bodaisen )Wash 18 liters of polished rice until the water is clear.
Remove 1.8 liters of rice from that and cook it.12 In thesummertime, be sure to allow the rice to cool thoroughly.
Put that cooked rice in a bamboo basket and soak it in water,
positioning it in the middle of the [remaining] uncookedrice. Seal the container for a day and let stand overnight.13
On the third day, place a bucket (oke) off to the side andremove any clear water at the top of the vessel. Then remove
the cooked rice from the center and place it in the bucket off
to the side. Next, remove the uncooked rice and thoroughly
steam it. In the summer, be sure to allow that rice to coolcompletely. [From that rice prepare] 9 liters (5 shō) of kōji
and set aside 1.8 liters (1 shō) of it. Combine that 1.8 literskōji with the 1.8 liters of cooked rice [that had been soaking
in the basket in the water] and place half of it flat on thebottom of a bucket. Combine the remaining [4 shō] kōji with

Soak 18 liters of brown rice overnight. While the rice is still
hot, place it into a vessel [either a large bucket (koga) or
a ceramic vessel (koka)]. Measure out 1.8 liters of hot waterand pour that on top. Stir it using a mixing stick. Remove therice and allow to cool overnight. Prepare the usual 10.8 litersof kōji. Combine that with the rice and place it in a container.
Stir it twice a day. If the ferment quietens, mix it with thestirrer. Cover the container. The sake is ready in twenty days.

gloss y silk ( nerinuki )Do not produce this sake in the eleventh lunar month(December); instead, make it after the New Year. Measureout 18 liters of polished rice and wash it until the water isclear. Set aside 1.8 liters of rice from that and cook it, allowing it to cool completely. Put the cooked rice in a bamboo
basket and soak it in water, placing it in the middle of theuncooked rice. Seal the container and let it stand for sevendays. On the seventh day, remove all the mold (kabi) fromthe top of the water, then scoop out the water and fill up
a rice caldron (kama) with it, boiling it until it is reduced involume to 80 percent.
[Take the remaining 16.2 liters of rice], steam it, andwhile it is still hot place it in a separate large vessel (kokaor koga). Measure out 1.8 liters of the hot water and pour it
on top. Let it stand for an hour, and then agitate it with thestirrer. Mix with the stirrer and allow it to cool overnight.
Combine 10.8 liters (6 shō) [more] rice with the sameamount of kōji and place them in the fermentation. Stir thistwice a day. Stir when it stops bubbling. Cover with a mat
and allow it to rest for seven days.
Combine the 1.8 liters of rice prepared the first day with kōji
and add them to the existing fermentation. [Wait] twenty days.

Postscript: Sake Brewing after Sake Journal
The recipes in Sake Journal reflect an age when brewing
occurred year-round, used both brown and polished rice,and faced other technical limitations such as the size ofthe brewing container. All these aspects of medieval brewing changed in the early modern period, when the forefront of commercial sake production shifted from temples
in the Nara area to the cities of Itami, Ikeda, and Nada inmodern Hyōgo and Osaka prefectures, areas today that
produce approximately a third of all sake made in Japan.
Commercial brewers of the early modern age transitioned
to brewing only in the wintertime, allowing them tolengthen the fermentation period and better control bacteria that proliferated in warmer weather that might damage the sake. Early modern brewers also used polished riceat all stages of the production process and could rely onrice milled to a much higher level and speed thanks towaterwheels, innovations that would have produced
a smoother tasting sake. And they perfected methods tomaintain a healthy fermentation and boost production byadding their ingredients of rice, kōji, and water in stages of
ever-increasing amounts into wooden barrels with muchlarger capacities than medieval ceramic vessels. The recipe for sake today owes a deep debt to the developments ofthe brewers’ art in the early modern period, but earlymodern brewers were likewise indebted to their medieval
predecessors, as Sake Journal shows.

Acknowledgments
p a s t e u ri z i n g “ g l o s s y s i l k ” ( nerinuki ) andkikaki. 1 4

On the twenty-fifth day of the fourth month, heat the sake tothe temperature warmed for drinking (nomikan); on the

The author appreciates the detailed comments from two
anonymous readers. He is also grateful to Monica Bethe andAmanda Stincheum for sharing their knowledge of latemedieval silk fabrics.

WINTER 2021

kikakitwenty-fifth day of the fifth month, the sake should be hot
to the touch (tehikikan); carefully remove all the foam at the
top. Likewise, on the twenty-fifth of the sixth month, the sakeshould be warmed until drinking temperature, then covered
so it is airtight for approximately seven days.
A second method of pasteurizing for these two types ofsake is to heat the sake so that it is hot to the touch regardlessof the time of year, and carefully remove any foam that rises
to the top when it is being heated. This will enable the saketo last up to a year. This is a transcription of an oral secret,and it should be kept secret.

49
GASTRONOMICA

the rice, mixing these together and placing them in thefermentation (tsukuri). Measure off 1.8 liters of the [clear]water removed earlier and add that on top. Then spread the[other half of the] cooked rice [and kōji] from earlier on topof that. Cover the opening with a straw mat; let it rest forseven days. The sake is usually done in seven days, but if you
do not need it yet, wait up to ten days.

WINTER 2021
GASTRONOMICA

50

notes

references

1. This translation is based on Kondō (1893–1897) and uses thecommentary from Katō (1989: 39–51), Matsumoto (1979), andYoshida (2016: 102–107).
2. The same characters for goshu (御酒) can also be read as miki, whichusually refers to sake used as an offering to a deity in a religious ritual.
3. The temple describes these activities on its website. https://shoryakuji.jp/event/event2.html
4. Besides changing the color of the sake, the ash served as way tocounteract the acidic taste of the sake as it aged, a problem for sakebrewed in the summer that fermented quickly (Yunoki 2005: 29).
5. Shogakukan Unabridged Dictionary of the Japanese Language.
JapanKnowledge. Japanknowledge.com

Christy, Alan. 2012. A Discipline on Foot: Inventing Japanese Native
Ethnography, 1910–1945. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gay, Suzanne. 2001. The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto.
Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Hioki Shōichi. 2005. Monoshiri jiten, inshokuhen. Tokyo: Kuresu
Shuppan, 2005.
Imada, Shuso. 2021. “Domestic Sake Market.” https://japansake.or.
jp/sake/en/sake-statistics-data/others
Ishige, Naomichi. 2000. “Japan,” in The Cambridge World Historyof Food, vol. 2, edited by Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild
Coneè Ornelas. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1175–
1183.
Issunsha, ed. 1985. Ryōri monogatari, in Nihon ryōri hiden shūsei:
Genten gendaigoyaku, vol. 1. Kyoto: Issunsha. 145–164.
Katō Hyakuichi. 1989. Sake wa morohaku: Nihonshu o unda gijutsu
to bunka. Tokyo: Heibonsha.
____________. 1990. “Nara Shōryakuji no shubo seizō menkyo
kōfu.” Nihon jōzō kyōkai zasshi 94(7): 535–541.
Kondō Heijō. 1893–1897. Shiryō tsūshin sōshi. Tokyo: ShiryōTsūshin Kyōkai.
Kondō, Hiroshi. 1984. Sake, A Drinker’s Guide. New York:
Kodansha.
Matsumoto Buichirō. 1979. “‘Goshu no nikki’ to sono kaigi—Satake
monjo yori.” Nihon jōzō kyōkai zasshi 74(11): 748–751.
Ogura Kumeo, Komatsuzaki Takeshi, and Hatae Keiko, eds. 2003.
Nihon ryōri gyōji shikitari daijiten. Tokyo: Purosutā.
Rath, Eric C. 2004. The Ethos of Noh: Actors and Their Art. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
__________. 2010. Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
__________. 2016. Japan’s Cuisines: Food, Place and Identity. London: Reaktion Books.
___________. 2021. Oishii: The History of Sushi. London: Reaktion
Books.
Roussille, Gautier. 2017. Nihoshu: Japanese Sake. [Place of publication not identified]: Gautier Roussille.
Yamashita Masaru. 1999. “Kuchikami sake to wa (1),” Nihon jōzōkyō
kaishi 94(1): 38–46.
Yokota Hiroyuki. 2019. Horoyoibanashi: Sake no Nihon bunkashi.
Tokyo: Keibunsha.
Yoshida Hajime. 2015. Sake. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku.
_____________. 2016. Kyō no sakegaku. Kyoto: Rinsen Sensho.
Yunoki Manabu. 2005. Sakezukuri no rekishi, shinsōpan. Tokyo:
Yūzankaku.

6. According to the brewery’s website, Wakatakeya started making
sake in 1699. https://wakatakeya.com
7. Apart from Sake Journal, the first reference to pasteurization in
Japan is from the 1560s (Yoshida 2015: 107).
8. Shogakukan Unabridged Dictionary of the Japanese Language.
JapanKnowledge. Japanknowledge.com
9. For a further description of kama and kamado, see Rath (2016: 78–81).
10. Mixing the kōji with water helps to diffuse the enzymes in thewater in preparation for fermentation, an important step before
adding the other ingredients.
11. Katō (1989: 46) interprets this as white rice, but Matsumoto(1979: 748) and Yoshida (2016: 103) contend it is brown rice. To me,
the original “good rice with the chaff removed” ([w]are mo naki noumai) suggests brown rice. The directions to “steam it thoroughly”
are also consistent with other passages that indicate brown rice.
12. The text indicates that “one should make rice” (odai ni subeshi).
The commentators equate the rice here with cooked rice (gohan)(Yoshida 2016: 104; Matsumoto 1979: 749). Steaming was one of themethods for cooking rice for eating in the medieval period and thepreferred method for preparing rice for sake brewing, so it is likelythat the cooking method here is steaming. One of the advantages ofsteaming is that the grain remains much firmer and therefore lesslikely to dissolve compared to boiling. For more on premodern ricecooking methods, see Rath (2016: 76–83).
13. Presumably, the covering was removed later, and the container
sat for two additional days.
14. This section comes after the recipe for Amano sake, but I follow
Yoshida (2015) and move it to the end since pasteurization occurs
after brewing the sake.