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The label on the neck of a bottle of Sharaku 冩楽 junmai ginjo says: jun ai shikomi [pure love brewing].
In Tokyo on the evening of February 15, I was sitting cross-legged in the private dining room of Takara, a modern izakaya, with John Gauntner and his students taking the 2011 Advanced Sake Professional Course. At the table with us was John’s own sake sensei, Haruo Matsuzaki. The night felt auspicious. We toasted, shouting, “kampai!” Mori-san, the maitre d’, organized the perfect service of numerous courses of food matched to the seven sakes John had chosen for the evening. After we ate and drank ourselves into a happy flushed stupor, people began crawling like babies over cushions on the wood floor to talk to others. The very long table was covered with tall 1.8 liter bottles of sake, many katakuchi (sake flasks with open tops), innumerable o-choko (small sake cups), and the plates from dinner. The conversation was animated, enthusiastic, and a bit drunken. Delight and déjà vu: back in 2005 through 2008 when I lived in Japan, Takara had been the site of nine memorable John Gauntner dinners that had solidified my interest in sake.
One of the sakes on February 15th was Sharaku 冩楽 junmai ginjo from Fukushima, a rich, tingly, and delicious pure rice sake named after the 18th-century ukiyo-e master whose identity is a mystery. The neck of the bottle had a label that read, “Pure Love Brew,” a pun on the word jun for “pure” [100%] rice sake, with a mixed meaning of something like “love of pure rice sake brewing” and “brewed with pure love.” I was so taken with the phrase that I pledged in a slurred voice that I would pursue a jun life, making it delicious and full of love.
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And that is where I stopped writing when I heard the news of the earthquake/tsunami/radiation crisis in Japan. This post was going to be about my love of sake and sake people: my sake sensei, John Gauntner, and John’s coordinator in the sake courses and sake tours (sake expert in her own right), Etsuko Nakamura. I wanted to share photos of the toji (master brewers) and owners of the breweries we visited and the two sake experts that shared their knowledge with us in the class, Shunsuke Kohiyama, and Matsuzaki-san.
(on right) Kohiyama-san, former brewer, sake industry expert
Matsuzaki-san, sake expert
After much thought I think that my impulse to highlight the lives of individuals remains the best way we can relate to tragedy. Waves crashing over entire towns can too easily be abstracted in one’s mind as a trailer for a movie about world destruction. But what is lost is moments and memories we can grasp one person, one moment at a time. This is all I can offer today: names and faces of individuals in Japan, some of whom I know are safe, some I hope are. I offer my broken heart with pure love for the the people who died, the people who will suffer, and all that will be lost.
Miyasaka-san, president of Miyasaka Shuzo in Nagano Prefecture, maker of Masumi sake.
Igarashi-san, toji of Kumazawa Shuzo in Kanagawa, maker of Tensei sake.
Aoshima-san, toji of Kumazawa Shuzo in Shizuoka, maker of Kikuyoi sake.
QUESTION: Has Madam been silenced by an evil cartel of Tea Party enthusiasts and vegetarians? –WL
ANSWER: At some point during the hot summer here in D.C. the sake ran out; things looked bleak. Time passed. After a short vacation in Maine, Madam came home to her local bar, was offered a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale, and she realized it was already autumn. She has a story or two to tell…
Oh those dire times, back in July 2008, when Madam, your blog mistress, with misgivings and many protestations of 寂しくなるだろうよ (I will miss you) was required to move back to the United States. Farewell, sake friends and sumo tournaments and my unbelievable Japanese teacher with her weekly regional treats and her tart ironic glance at her countrymen…
So, I embraced the moment and sought a new name for this blog. What fun, I would continue the blog in America, and Ambrose Bierce would be my standard-bearer. The blog was renamed!
A year-and-a-half goes by and I’m buying too much sake and reading back issues of Kyō no Ryōri (Today’s Cooking). I’m wondering why American bathtubs are so shallow and useless except for washing a sweater, where can a gal get a proper soak? I got nothing for a blog.
Sei Shonagon is fucking laughing at me. She’s in her layered silks and writing about how this fool arrived at court begging for scraps, singing bawdy songs. Nope, it was Sei’s bag all along. I may be located in Washington, D.C., but a piece of my 心 is still in Japan.
I want to explore sake and Japanese culture, or what scraps I can find in the Washington, D.C. area. Of course, I may meander off topic. After all, I’m eating a white pizza while drinking a lovely junmai ginjo right this moment.
Therefore, the blog goes back to its maiden name, “You, madam, are no Sei Shonagon,” and there it shall remain.
I think.
マダムが忙しいですから、ブロッグにかけなかった、ごめんあさい！
Madam has been a bit busy learning a new job, taking Japanese, worrying over her sick dogwood tree…
She promises to write before the end of August soon. If you would be kind enough to check back later (おかえていただけませんか), she would greatly appreciate it.
Here’s a photo of a hydrangea (taken June 2008 in Tokyo). I want one of these blue ones for my garden next year.
Back soon… またね！
Photo: Ema (Shinto prayer plaques) at Kasuga Shrine in Nara—or my future in-box.
I already know what my dad would say, so I’m not asking him. When you start a new job search, you just don’t take the first job you are offered. True, I haven’t been offered the job yet, but let’s be real, at the interview they were selling the job to me. I’m not sure I want the job. But there are considerations.
I’m a healthy adult and I have no kids to raise. It’s just me, unemployed and wishing we had a bit more disposable income. This job is not in book publishing, my normal gig; it’s something completely different, but in an industry that is somewhat recession, hell, depression proof. It will pay fairly well (compared to publishing) and I would be doing work that comes naturally to me, organizing, finding ways to be efficient, finding niches to fill. They want a “self-starter.” I’m a self-compulsive. It could work just fine.
I haven’t heard back from any of the other places to which I’ve applied. I don’t expect to hear for weeks because that’s just how it works. Send in résumé, hear nothing, try to bug them, hear nothing, then get one or two bites for interviews. I haven’t seen an ad for my dream job, but there are a few good leads.
I want to make books. I love making books. It was the classic What Color Is Your Parachute? quiz that told me I like to be around books and perhaps I should work as an editor. So I did. But we all know the old story, I thought I’d like to be a writer, so I became a production editor. Still, there have been moments of real achievement and happiness in some of the books I have shepherded along to publication: the first translation of a fifteenth-century recipe book from Mandu in Central India (with four-color illustrations, scans of the original handpainted miniatures); an encyclopedia of marine mammals; a science textbook and video about HIV. I have lists of every book I have worked on. Almost all academic books: many in university classrooms, cracked open, written in, cited in papers. I don’t know exactly how many books have arrived from the printer for my approval, for me to send to the author, but I remember the collective smell of the ink and the feel of the paper. It’s a good job, making books.
Book publishing has been having serious financial difficulties for longer than I’ve worked in the field (since 1994), but somehow I always scraped up a good job, found a way in. Why do I lack confidence this time? Why am I so eager to jump ship?
For one, it seems churlish and childish to hold out for a dream job this year of all years. My job would help pay the bills. Since we bought our first house three months ago, I’ve become aware of money in way I’ve never been before. Sure, for a few years in Japan I tried to make studying Japanese and teaching English seem like I was fully occupied, but come on, have you seen all those posts about sake on this blog? It was a decadent break after some good jobs in San Diego and London. My best dude churns out his work year after year, and keeps us flush with wine and cheese and laundry soap and toilet paper and trips to New York City. Time for me to pony up some cash. Frankly, it feels immoral to pass up employment when offered. My question: will anyone else offer some to me in the near future? I just don’t know.
A little ema offered for my fellow job seekers this year. Ganbatte kudasai!
ETA: I took the job.
ETA2: I quit six months later to return to book publishing.
