Abstract
This article focuses on the everyday practices of kurabito, the Japanese Sake manufacturers, in a sakagura, a small-scale brewery, in Kansai, Japan. Particular attention is paid to the action of inscribing ― “writing,” “marking” or “curving”- at various places in the brewery. Data for this study was collected through participant observation at the brewery in the seven years since 2001. I will suggest that the technology of inscribing is indispensable to contemporary Japanese Sake brewing. Every day, many and various inscriptions are produced by the kurabito in the brewery. Utilizing them, the kurabito are able to visualize the brewing itself, and to make it understandable to themselves. These inscriptions are important tools in the process of making Sake. In fact it can be said that they are embedded in the situation. Moreover, I point out that these practices also construct a community of the kurabito in the workplace. Understanding such things, we cannot simply think that Sake brewing is a result of the expression and realization of the knowledge of brewing, which it is assumed are internalized deeply in the workers’ bodies. Rather, we find that Sake brewing is carried out through successive negotiations, which are restrained socially and physically, between the workers’ bodies and the materials through these tools.
