Directed by Erik Shirai
2015, 90 minutes, Color
“A cinematic documentary that reveals the story of passionate saké-makers and what it takes to make world-class saké at Yoshida Brewery, a 144-year-old family-owned small brewery in northern Japan.”
At first it seems like another Jiro Dreams of Sushi for the foodies or a straightforward “how it’s made” documentary, but The Birth of Saké is much smarter and is full of heart and soul. Shirai has created a fantastic and distinctly Japanese version of a modern predicament – how to come together as humans to live and work despite the progression of time and technology.
All of the men and families in Yoshida Brewery of Ishikawa Prefecture are interesting (full props to Shirai for creating compelling portraits), but I was particularly captivated by Yasuyuki (Yachan) Yoshida, age 27, and the brewery’s sixth-generation heir. He’s the one in center wearing the green in the squad pic above. The responsibility for these men, these families, and his family’s legacy will eventually fall to him. These days, the family name doesn’t mean much for most people, but when you have a craft tied to it, suddenly failure is more than just your company going out of business, it’s eternal shame before your ancestors.
There’s a small caveat to my appreciation of the film though, a nagging feeling that I may be guilty of “exoticizing” this kind of work in this particular region. The fields of “knowledge work” and most “creative work” have obviously been alienated from the physical act of making, and to make up for it, some experience a kind of “pastoral fetishism.” This can be further extended from the farmhouse to the workshop and to the factory floor, which helps to explain the urban "love” of handmade objects and craftsmanship. You’ve probably heard this argument about authenticity before and it’s not that interesting, but it’s a strong argument for why this movie is culturally important in our current Brooklyn era of fake Mast Brothers chocolate fooling people with their saccharine packaging.
All of this is to say, I think the remarkable part of the movie is that Shirai has shown the hard parts of the process. He shows the team’s hard labor of spending six months out of the year away from their families to make something they can be proud of and yet for many of them, this is not necessarily about love of the craft – it’s a job and they may have to walk away from it to find other ways to make ends meet. These men did not quit their hedge funds or take their trust funds to start a brewery.
This fact is especially important to keep in mind as Yoshida leaves the brewery’s town in northern Japan to promote their saké in the major Japanese cities and around the globe. Suddenly, the stakes and challenges come into focus and we see Yoshida’s relentless courage and his true belief in their work. And yet I can’t help but think – in this world, do people understand what small batch or handcrafted means? Can they taste the love, the knowledge, the history, the labor, and the pain that went into every drop?
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