“With rescued rice, Tsuruno was able to plant the seeds that will ensure the survival of her brewery.”

The Azure Road Take

On January 1, 2024, the Noto peninsula, in Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture, was hit by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake. The impact on the region’s sake brewers was profound. All of Noto’s 11 sake breweries were badly damaged, six of them completely destroyed. With production halted and bottled stock destroyed, both the livelihood of the brewers and the future of Noto’s centuries-old tradition of sake brewing were threatened. However, in the aftermath, Japan’s community of sake brewers has rallied around the affected breweries, with unaffected breweries offering production space and resources to their counterparts from Noto and brewers coming together to support their out-of-work colleagues. Out of the ruins, one collaboration in particular has emerged, spearheaded by one of Japan’s few female master sake brewers. 

Sustainability Chops

On the Noto peninsula, satoyama and satoumi are recognized by UNESCO as` Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems for their traditional practices that preserve the environment and the sustainability of traditional rural culture. From the words sato (“place where people live”) and yama (“mountains”) or umi (“sea”), satoyama and satoumi refer to places where humans and ecosystems mutually benefit each other, preserving biodiversity and sustaining livelihoods. Depopulation, which leads to deterioration caused by underuse, has threatened the survival of the system for years. Now the earthquake has dealt another blow. By making use of Noto’s rich natural environment and traditional practices, sake brewers support these practices and are  critical to their preservation.

The Artisan

Yukiko Tsuruno is toji (master brewer) while Shintaro is the kuramoto (brewery owner) of Tsuruno Sake Brewery. The brewery has been making the crisp Tani Izumi-brand sake on the Noto peninsula’s east coast for more than 200 years using traditional methods without modern machinery. Initially, Yukiko studied business management in the neighboring prefecture of Toyama. When her parents discussed her taking over the management side of the brewery, where her father served as toji for 60 years, she discovered a newfound interest in making sake. Through sake, “you can engage in the tradition of Japan,” she says. “This is what made me decide to go back to my hometown.” 

When she became toji in her early twenties, she joined a select group: out of more than a thousand sake breweries nationwide, fewer than 40 have female toji. For a long time, sake-making was a male tradition, she says, adding that it even used to be said that the sake would spoil if a woman entered a brewery. “But nowadays, it’s changing. Slowly.”

On New Year’s Day 2024, when Tsuruno saw the damage wrought by the earthquake, she thought her sake brewing career had ended. Her brewery, store, and home in the town of Noto had been flattened. Fortunately, when the earthquake hit, she had finished work for the day and had left to visit family in Nanao an hour south.

On January 2, her friends told her that they’d covered her surviving sake rice to prevent it from getting wet. On January 3, while the region still shook from periodic aftershocks, they formed a human chain to rescue, by hand, all of the surviving 30-kilogram sacks of rice. With this rice, Tsuruno was able to plant the seeds that would ensure the survival of her brewery.

After more than two months of living in an elementary school-turned-shelter, Tsuruno relocated to Kanazawa, Ishikawa’s capital. There she met with Kazuhiko Itaya, toji of the city’s oldest brewery Fukumitsuya, which celebrates its 400-year-anniversary in 2025. 

They devised a plan to make a joint sake using Tsuruno’s surviving rice, two types of yeast used by both breweries, and water from nearby Haku mountain, which takes 100 years to reach Fukumitsuya’s well. Comprising around 80 percent of the finished product, water proves integral to informing sake’s terroir. Of course, Tsuruno had concerns about incorporating a different source. 

However, after tasting the two jointly brewed ginjo sakes, Tani Izumi X Kagatobi Junmai Ginjo and Tsuru to Fuku Junmai Daiginjo, she noticed how similar they tasted to her own. Proceeds from the sold-out collaborative sakés have gone toward rebuilding Tsuruno’s brewery and while details are still being finalized, the brewers are planning another joint release in April—you’ll have to go to Japan to try it though, as the limited release is only available in the domestic market. U.S. customers can find Fukumitsuya’s regular sake lineup, however, at various online retailers.

Impact

Based on the experience of sake brewers in Fukushima, whose breweries were destroyed in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Tsuruno estimates it will take at least eight years to rebuild her brewery. In the meantime, the collective efforts of Japan’s sake breweries, including Fukumitsuya, ensure that Noto’s brewing heritage can be preserved. This spirit of camaraderie embodies the heart of traditional sake making, as described by UNESCO when the organization added it to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: “Sake-making requires many hands and strong teamwork.”