Episode 29: Emergence of Sake Series: Bodaimoto and How Oda Nobunaga ended soboshu
00:17
Greeting
Hey, everyone! Welcome to Episode 29 of Sugidama Podcast, the podcast about Japanese sake, the drink which for a long time was brewed by monks using a few very interesting methods before sake breweries as we know them now took over. And we are going to talk about it today.
But before we talk about it, let me tell you about our sponsor, London Sake, which has one of the widest selections of premium and craft sake available online today. You can choose from over 100 sake from 25 breweries, and they will deliver across the UK and many European markets. And if you don’t know what sake to choose you can use simple online tasting notes together with very sensible and affordable food pairings to help you decide. What’s more, you can get a 10% discount by just using the code: SUGIDAMA (all caps) during checkout. London Sake: making sake simple.”
My name is Alex and I live in London. I am a certified sake specialist, sake judge, sake educator and sake advocate. Besides this podcast, I have Sugidama Blog where I write about all things sake, publish tasting notes, overviews, and information about sake events happening in London.
Before we will plunge into another historical journey, let me read out another 5-star review of Sugidama Podcast, this time from Best.Japanese entitled: “What a gem of a podcast!”
“Really great show to discover more about Sake. Just listened to the episode with Andy Travers from London Sake. Excellent tasting notes and really nice to hear more about the Sake industry in the UK. Looking forward to the new season!”
Thanks a lot, Best.Japanese! I hope that you are listening to this episode of the new season! And I think that Best.Japanese is a website focused on Japanese food and culture. So I am sure that I will meet some of their team in person at one of the Japanese events happening in London.
02:45
Sake innovations by monks
So we were talking about soboshu, the sake brewed by monks in medieval Japan up to the beginning of the Edo period, which started in the 17th century. However, soboshu pretty much ended during the Sengoku Jidai, the Warring States period of the 16th century. And we will talk about why it happened in a moment.
As I already mentioned in the previous episode of the series, monasteries were not only centres of religious practices and studies but also possessed the key components of what made them successful in sake brewing: economic power, skilled labour force, scientific knowledge and strong political clout.
It should be noted, that while monasteries were a very strong force in sake brewing at that time, sake kept being brewed at the Imperial Court, at independent sake breweries (though they were tiny by modem standards) and of course at homes.
The dominant method of sake making in medieval Japan was very similar to doburoku: you put together koji rice, steamed rice and water and wait until it all ferments resulting in a thick porridge-like alcoholic drink. But it’s in human nature to look for new things and innovate the existing processes. So what did Japanese monks innovate in sake making?
There are actually quite a lot of key processes used today to make delicious sake. First of all, it’s rice polishing. Monasteries started using polished rice for making high-grade sake during the Heian period, which lasted from the end of the 8th century up to 1185. The sake, which used polished rice for both koji-mai or rice koji and kake-mai, the plain steamed rice, was called morohaku. “Moro! means both sides and “haku” means polishing.
By the way, the sake which used unpolished rice for koji-mai and polished for kake-mai was called katahaku, where “kata” means one side. And the sake which used unpolished rice in both cases was called namizake. So morohaku was the highest quality sake at that time. Morohaku also meant highly clear sake, similar to the typical sake we have now. And the higher grade was only gozenshu, the sake brewed for shogun and daimyo, feudal lords.
Another innovation, that came from soboshu is pasteurisation: heating up sake to get rid of unwanted microorganisms. Again, the technique did not become widespread before the Edo period but was used by various temples some 400 years before Louis Pasteur discovered the method and explained it. Also, there is some evidence that sake pressing also was invented in some temples but again did not become a common technique until much later.
However, probably the most important innovation that happened during that period was a very important change in the brewing process. And it was driven simply by the increasing size of brewing vessels. Initially, sake was brewed in very small quantities. A few litres, probably slightly more. But gradually the brewing vessels were getting bigger. During the Kamakura period (the end of the 12th century - to the mid 14th century) sake was brewed in kame jars, which contained 360-540 litres. Sometime in the 16th century, Jikkoku, an eighteen hundred litre sake tank was developed.
So when you make sake in a small jar, for example, the yeast living in the air is enough to start colonising the mixture of rice and koji and start the fermentation. However, with larger quantities, it just does not work. You need to build up a much higher concentration of microorganisms so they could start thriving in the moromi, a sake brewing mash. Like if you ever made sourdough bread, you need a starter.
So what monks, and particularly the monks of the Shoryaku-ji Temple on Mt. Bodai in Nara, did, they came up with a process of building a sake starter and made sure that it could survive, not get spoilt by other nasty microbes. I was talking about this method, which is called bodaimoto and was practically rediscovered only about 30 years ago in Episode 4. If you haven’t listened to it, it’s a good time to do it.
08:01
How bodaimoto is made
So bodaimoto is one of the first sake brewing processes done in several stages rather than in one go as doburoku. The process starts with taking rice, mixing it with water and leaving it for a while until the water becomes sour from lactic acid, developed by lactic acid bacteria. The water is called soyashimizu. As you might know from the early episodes about the sake making process, yeast loves the acidic environment which other microorganisms don’t.
So after the acidic soyashimizu was ready, it was mixed with other ingredients to start the actual brewing. As the acidic environment kept away unwanted bacteria, it allowed the brewing mixture to stay unspoilt longer in order to develop enough yeast for kicking in the fermentation. It’s also possible that gradually brewers realised that they could make smaller batches first and then add them into a larger quantity of rice and water, inventing the real multi-stage brewing technique used today. But it all started with bodaimoto.
Another thing I would like to mention and I learnt it from the excellent Sake Deep Dive podcast. Before I thought (and I am talking about it in episode 4 about sake starters) that bodaimoto and mizumoto were two names of the same process. However, Andrew Russell talks about it in the Sake Deep Dive Episode (and I will put a link to this particular episode in the show notes) that they were actually different processes. According to him, bodaimoto was a method for warm weather and mizumoto for cold weather.
However, nowadays bodaimoto usually means that the sake is either made using soyashimizu prepared at the Shoryaku-ji Temple or by Tsuji Honten, who actually rediscovered the method in the 1990s. While mizumoto refers to the sake made by the same method but without using the acidic water from the Shoryaku-ji temple. So listen to Episode 4 if you would like to know more about how bodaimoto was rediscovered.
10:36
Mid sponsor’s message
OK before we talk about two very interesting topics, prohibition and commercialisation of sake making, let me remind you about London Sake, our sponsor and their huge selection of curated sake sets, which provide a great opportunity to explore various styles and types of sake. Have a look but don’t forget about the magic word, SUGIDAMA (all caps) to get your 10% discount.
11:07
Kamakura period and Prohibition
OK, we are now moving into the Kamakura period I mentioned earlier in the episode (1185 - 1333). During the Kamakura period, the emergence of the samurai, the warrior class, and the establishment of feudalism started in Japan. The samurai government called bakufu was based in Kamakura, now a town not far from Tokyo. I love Kamakura, though I’ve been there only once. It’s often featured in the movies by the great Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu movies because he lived there.
During the Kamakura period, sake brewing was still dominated by temples but it also saw the emergence of small independent breweries. A lot of new sake microbreweries were making sake in those kame jars either 360 litres or 540 litres.
However, at some point, the government noticed that samurai and other people started drinking too much which led to a lot of unpleasant accidents. The problem was samurai was that they had swords and a drunk man with a sword is a recipe for disaster.
In 1252 the bakufu had enough and issued a total ban on selling and buying sake, called Koshu No Kin (prohibition of sake trading). Mind that sake was still made at the Imperial Court and at temples, but all these small breweries were forced to destroy all their sake brewing jars but one per household.
The ban continued for quite a long time, until the end of the Kamakura period, around 80 years. Not that people didn’t drink at all that time, but they probably could not buy sake openly and had either to brew it themselves or find a way to procure it in some other way.
13:13
Muromachi period: the start of the commercialisation of sake brewing
The Kamakura period ended in 1333 with a brief restoration of the imperial power, which was followed by another samurai government, Muromachi bakufu. The Muromachi period lasted for almost 250 years with the actual capital moving back to Kyoto. What a new samurai government realised was that sake sales could be a very good source of tax revenues. So they dropped the ban and the sake brewing industry started flourishing again.
Many sake-making innovations I mentioned in this episode actually came during the Muromachi period: pasteurisation or hi-ire, danjikomi, the sake brewing process consisted of several steps like bodaimoto with making starter before the main fermentation. "Goshu no Nikki" (The technical book on sake brewing) written at the beginning of the Muromachi period, had descriptions of techniques such as danjikomi, bodaimoto, pasteurization and even filtration by charcoal.
By 1425, the number of registered sake breweries in and outside of Kyoto was 342. Interestingly, at that time sake breweries not only made sake but also were involved in money lending and employed special bodyguards who were collecting debts and guarding their fortunes.
The quality of sake had also improved significantly during that time thanks to technological innovations and strong competition driven by high demand for sake. The morohaku sake made from only polished rice was getting more and more popular.
And the koji revolt I was talking about in the previous episode of the series actually happened during the Muromachi period.
It was also the time of first sake brands became well-known across the country like Bodaisen, Yamadaru, or Yamato Tafu no Mine zake. Urbanisation was happening quite fast during the Muromachi period, which created more demand for sake as townfolks often could not brew sake themselves. They did not have a surplus of rice as rice farmers and temples and it was probably too expensive to buy rice and make it into sake.
Another trend in the Muromachi period was the emergence of sake breweries outside Kyoto and its surroundings. Kyoto still remained the largest sake market in the country so a lot of regional sake made its way into the capital. It was called yosozake, the sake brewed outside of the Kyoto area. Kyoto breweries were constantly petitioning the Imperial Court and the Bakufu government to ban the sales of cheap yosozake in Kyoto. The government usually complied but it was a futile struggle. Yosozake still managed to end up in Kyoto.
16:32
Sengoku Jidai: the end of soboshu
However, the Muromachi bakufu was always quite weak. It eventually resulted in a near-constant civil war, called Sengoku Jidai or the Warring States period. It started in the second half of the 15th century, which was still the Muromachi period, and continued for almost 150 years until the Edo period.
I am not going to tell you about the whole Sengoku period, the unification of Japan and the three unifiers: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Iyasu Tokugawa in great detail. What we are interested in here is the last say 50 years of the period. There are a few important things that happened then. First of all, it’s the end of soboshu, the sake made by monks.
So the first of the three great unifiers of Japan was Oda Nobunaga, a ruthless warlord who managed to unify a very big part of Japan under his rule and shut down the Ashikaga Shogunate in 1573, putting the end to the Muromachi period.
Nobunaga had very strong opposition from other warlords like Takeda Shingen. If you watched Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, it was based on their rivalry. But Nobunaga was also facing very strong opposition from Buddhist temples, which at that time commanded massive resources, wealth, and political and military power. There were armies of warrior monks in various Buddhist sects, who were a very serious force.
One of such sects with a strong military force was Ikkō-ikki against which Nobunaga was fighting for more than 10 years. In August 1570, Nobunaga launched the Ishiyama Hongan-ji War against the Ikkō-ikki followed by the besieging of Nagashima, a series of Ikkō-ikki fortifications in Owari Province. The sect’s main stronghold, Ishiyama Hongan-ji in present-day Osaka, was his other target.
Another temple with significant military capabilities was Enryaku-ji in Mount Hiei. In 1571, Oda Nobunaga attacked the temple and besieged Mount Hiei, razing everything to the ground and killing not only monks but also laymen, women and children, who were there.
For sake, the destruction of major monasteries caused a significant decline in the tradition of soboshu, the sake brewed by monks since the middle of the Heian period. While the monasteries and temples were eventually revived, the brewing techniques didn’t. Nevertheless, these techniques were not forgotten and were passed to sake breweries and toji such as Zenemon Konoike or the Nara toji school, who not only preserved soboshu techniques but improved them further.
19:49
End of the era and pre-Edo sake
The second half of the 16th century was dominated by the efforts by first Oda Nobunaga and then by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Ieyasu Tokugawa to unify Japan under one rule. While they were fighting bloody and devastating battles, destroying temples, towns and villages, life continued in the areas unaffected by the war. As did sake brewing.
From this time we have the first report about sake written by Europeans. Either by Francis Xavier, a Jesuit, who described an alcoholic beverage made from rice in 1552, though it’s not clear whether it was shochu or sake because he was in Kagoshima at that time, where shochu is traditionally made. Or by his fellow Jesuit, Luis Frois (sorry, I’ve no idea how to pronounce it and it probably sounded differently five hundred years ago anyway), who in 1585 described a wine made from rice and called it “vinho”, wine in Portuguese, which was definitely sake.
Another huge innovation in sake brewing was the invention of an 1800 litre vat for sake brewing called jukkoku in 1582 in Nara, which together with the development of a multiple-stage brewing technique like bodaimoto, made mass production of sake possible.
So I am going to stop here because the next period is Edo which lasted for 250 years and during which a lot of modern sake techniques were developed. And before I moved to the sake of this episode, I just want to say a few words about what kind of sake people drank at the end of the 16th century.
So by this time, we can see a strong emergence of commercially brewed sake, which was more refined and probably better filtered than the traditional sake of the previous periods of Japanese history. Still, most of the sake was either namizake, brewed from unpolished rice or katahaku, where only the koji rice was polished. So the sake sold at that time was likely yellowish and had a thick sweet taste affected by the rice bran. Probably like today's mirin (sweet cooking sake). At the same time, doburoku was still brewed by farmers at their houses and also sold as a cheap low-grade alternative to refined sake.
22:40
Sake of episode: Gozenshu Junmai Bodaimoto Usu-nigori Namazake Misty Stream
OK, today and have a very interesting sake to feature, which is packed with a lot of goodies. It is Gozenshu Junmai Bodaimoto Usu-nigori Namazake Misty Stream from Tengu Sake. The sake is brewed by Tsuji Honten from Okayama. So let me first unpack the amazing things from that sake.
So first of all, the brewery, Tsuji Honten, is responsible for the revival of the bodaimoto brewing technique, we were talking about today. The story of how it happened is really fascinating and you can listen to episode 4 of this podcast, where I was telling it. Because the brewery played such an important role in the revival of bodaimoto, it is allowed to use the name without using the soyashimizu, acidic water, prepared at the Shoryaku-ji Temple. As I understand, Gozenshu also uses association yeast and does not rely on ambient yeast as in the olden times. But it is still bodaimoto with all its characteristics I will talk about in a minute.
As you can see from the name, it’s junmai, made with only rice, water, years and koji. It’s nigori, but a very fine nigori, so you can hardly see the rice particles in the sake. And it’s nama, unpasteurised sake.
Now let’s look at its spec. First of all, the rice. It’s Omachi, my favourite sake rice which often results in a deeper and more complex taste, which is absolutely true in the case of Misty Stream. Okayama prefecture, where the Tsuji brewery is located, is the birthplace of Omachi rice and its main producer. So it’s a truly local sake from the region.
I mentioned that the bodaimoto method produces more acidic sake, and you can see it in Misty Stream, which acidity is 2.2, well off the charts of your normal sake, which is usually 1.2-1.4 max. Its SMV is -6 meaning that the sake is on the sweet side. ABV is also rather high: 17% vs the usual 15-16%.
So how does Misty Stream taste, given all these goodies and rather unusual specs. Amazing, I have to say. It’s not a very aromatic sake, but still, you will notice dairy and rice notes (a good sign of namazake) with a bit of peach and a bit of sourness. The taste is very complex and deep. I first tried it chilled and it tasted bittersweet reminding me of blood orange marmalade. You will pick up the sweetness and the high acidy straight away. So it’s a perfect example of a bodaimoto sake.
Misty Stream has a very lavish oily texture thanks to usa-nigori part. These tiny rice particles do their job perfectly. And it’s slightly effervescent because it’s nama so still alive. It’s a pleasure to drink. You can savour it, think about various taste overtones and really enjoy the drink. I had it with grilled salmon in a creamy mushroom sauce and steamed kabocha pumpkin and it was a great pairing. The acidity and umami of the sake played very nicely with the rich food.
I also tried it warmed up and again it was fantastic. The sake became more mellow and less sweet, and the texture has also changed becoming more velvety. Given the choice, I would prefer Misty Stream warmed up rather than chilled. But again, it’s great chilled too. So if you want to try bodaimoto, then Gozenshu Misty Stream is a very good example of the style.
The bottle of Misty Stream also looks fantastic with two ancient women on the label. So yeah, it’s amazing sake!
27:02
Ending
That’s it for today. I’ll be back with an episode about sake in the Edo period but before that, I will publish a very interesting interview with Nancy Matsumoto and Michael Trambley about their upcoming book Japanese Craft Sake. In the meantime, buy a bottle of bodaimoto sake and try it. You can find Gozenshu sake on the Tengu Sake website, I will put the link in the show notes. While London Sake does not have bodaimoto, they have a lot of other interesting sake and you can get a 10% discount by entering SUGIDAMA all in caps at the checkout.
If you have any questions or suggestions about any sake topic, just drop me a line. My email address is alex@sugidama.co.uk or you can tag me on Instagram or Twitter @sugidamablog in one word.
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Kampai!