As food continues to traverse geographical boundaries, it also points to the importance of safeguarding cultural traditions in a world intent on homogenising.
Dec 7, 2024 02:00 IST First published on: Dec 7, 2024 at 02:00 IST
There is a Japanese proverb that roughly translates to “Parents’ words and chilled sake make an impression later.” The first might indeed hold true but not so much the second. For a drink that’s been around since the eighth century and speaks for Japan’s historical and cultural identity — it even found a brief mention in the third-century Chinese text, The Book of Wei, as the favoured funerary drink of the Japanese people — sake’s celebrity-hood needs little iteration. Now, with Unesco putting it on its list of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity”, alongside Brazilian white cheese, Caribbean cassava bread and Palestinian olive oil soap, nihonshu or Japanese alcohol’s moment of globalisation seems to have arrived.
Unlike the Serbian šljivovica — plum brandy — or the Georgian qvevri, recent additions to the intangible heritage list for which the subsequent boost to commerce has been vital, sake has followed a trajectory of its own. Its increasing popularity abroad has meant negotiating a precarious balance between maintaining authenticity and catering to a global palate. In Japan, however, the influx of international spirits, especially wine, has led to a decline in sake consumption. The Unesco honour comes as an opportunity for domestic revival.
As food continues to traverse geographical boundaries, it also points to the importance of safeguarding cultural traditions in a world intent on homogenising. Like washoku, the traditional Japanese cuisine that made it to the Unesco list in 2013, the preparation of sake, too, speaks of Japan’s deep connection with nature and craftsmanship. An intricate process involving rice, water, yeast, and koji mould, there was a time when sake was made solely by women. Its centrality in Japanese rituals, festivals and celebrations meant that it soon became an industry involving the community. In a country where loneliness is an epidemic and where “hikikomori” or voluntary isolation have become a practice, anything that brings the community together, either to brew sake or to raise a toast, deserves a shout-out.
