When it is not acceptable, many Japanese women make alcohol

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OKAYA, Japan (AP) – Shortly after dawn, Japanese sake brewer Mie Takahashi checks the temperature of the boiling mixture at her family’s 150-year-old sake brewery, Koten, located at the foot of the Japanese Alps. .

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He stands on an uneven wooden platform over a large tank containing more than 3,000 gallons (800 liters) of boiling soup of steamed rice, water and a rice mold called koji, and stirs it well with a long paddle.

“Mornings are important for doing things,” said Takahashi, 43. His brewery is in Nagano Prefecture, a region known for doing so.

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Takahashi is one of a small group of female toji, or master sake brewers. There are only 33 female toji registered with the Toji Guild Association of Japan out of over 1,000 breweries nationwide.

That’s more than a few decades ago. Women were kept out of production because of the war until after World War II.

Sake making has a history of over a thousand years, with strong roots in Japan’s traditional Shinto religion.

But when alcohol began to be mass-produced during the Edo period, from 1603 to 1868, an unspoken law prohibited women from entering breweries.

The reasons for the ban remain unclear. Another theory is that women were considered impure because of menstruation and were therefore excluded from shrines, said Yasuyuki Kishi, deputy director of the Sakeology Center at Niigata University.

“One theory is that since sake was mass-produced, a lot of hard work and dangerous work was involved,” he said. “Therefore, this work was considered inappropriate for women.”

But the gradual breakdown of gender barriers, coupled with a shrinking workforce caused by Japan’s rapidly aging population, has created space for more women to work to be productive.

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“Most of the time it is still an industry run by men. But I think that now people focus on whether a person has a passion for what they do, regardless of their gender,” said Takahashi.

He believes that the mechanization of the brewery is helping to reduce the gender gap. In Koten, a crane lifts hundreds of kilos (kilograms) of steamed rice in batches and places them in a cooling area, after which the rice is sucked through a pipe and moved to a separate room dedicated to growing koji.

“In the past, all of this would have been done by hand,” Takahashi said. “With the help of machines, many jobs are accessible to women.”

Sake, or nihonshu, is made by boiling steamed rice with koji fungus, which converts the starch into sugar. The ancient method of making the drink was recognized under UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage earlier this month.

As a child, Takahashi was not allowed to enter his family’s brewery. But when he turned 15, he was shown a brewery for the first time and was fascinated by the fermentation process.

“I saw it explode. It was nice to know that those bubbles were small creatures that you can’t even see,” said Takahashi who couldn’t drink alcohol at the time because he was young. “It smelled good. I thought it was amazing that this fragrance could be made with just rice and water. So I thought I’d like to try to do it myself.”

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He majored in fermentation science at Tokyo University of Agriculture. After graduation, he decided to return home to become a professional brewer. He trained for 10 years under the guidance of his predecessor, and at the age of 34 he became a bartender at his family’s brewery.

As the brewery enters its peak winter season, Takahashi oversees a seasonal crew and production ramps up. It’s hard work, hauling and handling huge amounts of steamed rice, and mixing thousands of liters (hundreds of gallons) of alcohol. The brewer must have the knowledge and skill to carefully control the growth of the koji mold, which needs to be monitored around the clock.

Despite being tough, Takahashi is able to foster camaraderie at the brewery, meeting the group as they mix koji rice by hand together in a steamy room.

“I was taught that the most important thing is to stick with your team,” said Takahashi. “The common saying is that if the atmosphere in the brewery is tense, because of that it will be difficult, but if things are going well in the brewery, then it will be fine.”

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The inclusion of women plays an important role in the survival of the Japanese sake industry, which has seen a steady decline since its heyday in the 1970s.

Home brewing has declined, while many small breweries are struggling to find new brewers. According to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association, today’s total production is about a quarter of what it was 50 years ago.

In order to stay competitive, Koten is among the many Japanese breweries that are trying to find a wider market both domestically and abroad.

“Our main product has always been dry, which the locals continue to drink regularly,” said Takahashi’s older brother, Isao Takahashi, who runs the business side of the family business. “Now we are exploring and creating a high value.”

She supports her sister’s experiments _- every year she makes a limited edition series, Mie Special, aimed at releasing their signature dried product.

“My sister can say she wants to try drinking less alcohol, or she wants to try a new yeast -_ all kinds of new techniques come in through her,” she said. “I want my sister to do what she wants, and I want to do my best to sell it.”

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