Sake in Religious Ceremonies

Video Transcript

"I'm Beau Timken, Master Sake Somoa and in this segment we are still talking about the history of sake. But in this context I want to talk about how sake was consumed, why it was consumed. Did people just take it and drink it by themselves at night? Sake from the very beginning was a way to praise the Gods, literally it was used in many many religious ceremonies. So if you wanted to have a good crop that year you would go out and sprinkle a little bit of sake and then pray to the Gods that year that you would have a very bountiful harvest. Shinto wedding celebrations, they still today will drink three times from a cup back and forth it is one of the great wedding ceremonies where you get to booze it up during your ceremony where they will drink three times and that then provides the golden glow of ancient histories on your wedding and gives you bountiful going forths and fruits of your labelers and etcetera. That said at the end of a ceremony, a wedding ceremony, they always have a traditional taru cask where in our country we have the bride and groom cut the cake. In Japan this taru cask is filled with sake and what the bride and groom do is they take a hammer or mallet and they crack the lid open and everybody comes and takes a scoop and they will come and pour the sake in little cups for everybody from the big taru cask. Now this cask can also be used for office openings, new buildings, new constructions, if you're making definitely a new dwelling, you would bless that dwelling, parties. Now gifting of sake is also incredibly important. As a way of where we would give champagne a lot of times Japanese would give sake as a gift. Now every New Year's Day sake is consumed and it is one of the great times for kids because in Japan they get to taste it. On New Year's Eve what you do is you open a bottle of sake and you add herbs and you will steep herbs into the sake and that night you will drink a little bit on New Year's Eve and then on New Year's Day you warm up this concoction and everybody in the house drinks it. It is again paying homage to the Gods and wishing and hoping for a new happy healthy New Year. Now history then goes forward as to how sake was consumed in terms of the roaring 80's, business culture. Most of the business deals of the 80's were definitely not done in the board room. They were done in sake pubs called Isakayas where these business guys would go out, they would loosen their ties and they would pour each other sakes in a manner that it was kind of a mutually assured destruction. You're getting drunk, I'm getting drunk, I've got to pour for you, a bonding mechanism. There is a fallacy that if you pour for yourself it is bad luck, that's not true at all actually it ingratiates you more to your friend if you just pour for yourself. But these business deals were then consummated and spouses were supposed to let their husbands go out at least three nights a week because most of the business deals were being done out at these Isakayas, these sake pubs. From then we obviously go to all the different forms of celebrations and again sake and celebrating are hand in foot in the Japanese context."