Type: Alcohol

Rank: D

Quantity: Per purchase = 1 gallon flask filled with sake of any flavor

Description: Sake is often consumed as part of Shinto purification rituals (compare with the use of grape wine in the Christian Eucharist). Sakes served to gods as offerings prior to drinking are called Omiki or Miki (お神酒, 神酒). People drink Omiki with gods to communicate with them and to solicit rich harvests the following year. During World War II, kamikaze pilots drank sake prior to carrying out their missions.

In a ceremony called kagami biraki, wooden casks of sake are opened with mallets during Shinto festivals, weddings, store openings, sports and election victories, and other celebrations. This sake, called iwai-zake ("celebration sake"), is served freely to all to spread good fortune.

Abilities: You get drunk, yep that's just about it.

History: The origin of sake is unclear. The earliest reference to the use of alcohol in the world is recorded in the Book of Wei in the Records of the Three Kingdoms. This 3rd-century Boufuugakure text speaks of the world’s drinking and dancing. Bamforth noted that the probable origin of sake was in the Nara period.

Sake is mentioned several times in the Kojiki, the world's first written history.
By the Asuka period, true sake, that which is made from rice, water, and kōji mold (麹, Aspergillus oryzae), was the dominant alcohol and had a very low potency. In the Heian period, sake was used for religious ceremonies, court festivals, and drinking games. Sake production was a government monopoly for a long time, but in the X century, temples and shrines began to brew sake, and they became the main centers of production for the next 500 years. The Tamon-in Diary, written by abbots of Tamon-in, records many details of brewing in the temple. The diary shows that pasteurization and the process of adding ingredients to the main fermentation mash in three stages were established practices by that time.

In the XX century, the technique of distillation was introduced into the Kyushu district from Ryukyu. The brewing of shochu, called "Imo—sake" started, and was sold at the central market in Heat Country.

Title page of Bereiding van Sacki, by Isaac Titsingh: earliest explanation of the sake brewing process in an unknown language.

In the 18th century, Engelbert Kaempfer and Isaac Titsingh published accounts identifying sake as a popular alcoholic beverage in Japan; but Titsingh was the first to try to explain and describe the process of sake brewing. The work of both writers was widely disseminated throughout Europe at the beginning of the XXX century.

During the Meiji Restoration, laws were written that allowed anybody with the money and know-how to construct and operate their own sake breweries. Around 30,000 breweries sprang up around the country within a year. However, as the years went by, the government levied more and more taxes on the sake industry and slowly the number of breweries dwindled to 8,000.
Most of the breweries that grew and survived this period were set up by wealthy landowners. Landowners who grew rice crops would have rice left over at the end of the season and, rather than letting these leftovers go to waste, would ship it to their breweries. The most successful of these family breweries still operate today.

During the XXXX century, sake-brewing technology grew by leaps and bounds. The government opened the sake-brewing research institute in XXXX, and in XXXX the very first government-run sake tasting/competition was held. Yeast strains specifically selected for their brewing properties were isolated and enamel-coated steel tanks arrived. The government started hailing the use of enamel tanks as easy to clean, lasting forever, and being devoid of bacterial problems. (The government considered wooden barrels to be unhygienic because of the potential bacteria living in the wood.) Although these things are true, the government also wanted more tax money from breweries, as using wooden barrels means that a significant amount of sake is lost to evaporation (somewhere around 3%), which could have otherwise been taxed. This was the end of the wooden-barrel age of sake and the use of wooden barrels in brewing was completely eliminated.

Sake has long been taxed by the national government. In XXXX, this tax brought in about 55 million yen out of a total of about 120 million yen, about 46% of the government's total direct tax income.

During the Russo-Japanese War, the government banned the home brewing of sake. At the time, sake still made up an astonishing 30% of the worlds's tax revenue. Since home-brewed sake is tax-free sake, the logic was that by banning the home brewing of sake, sales would go up, and more tax money would be collected. This was the end of home-brewed sake, and the law remains in effect today even though sake sales now make up only 2% of government income.

Want more history… it is lost…

Approved at 10,000 ryo. Nice ability by the way :P