{"id":1986,"date":"2014-02-05T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T12:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/wp\/?p=1986"},"modified":"2021-11-17T19:54:49","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T19:54:49","slug":"toshie-hiraide-sake-samurai-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/toshie-hiraide-sake-samurai-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Toshie Hiraide, Sake Samurai Japan – interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan has many icons. Sumo, sushi, kimonos are among the first that spring to the non-Japanese mind \u2026along with sake!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Toshie Japanese food and sake are becoming more common all over the world and London has a growing list of good restaurants serving sake to an increasingly knowledgeable audience. Toshie Hiraide is the Japanese Sake Samurai Co-ordinator. And that multinational organisation is responsible for promoting sake and finding new markets.<\/p>\n

Toshie is a vibrant lady who devotes her energies to spreading the word but she doesn\u2019t, as one might assume, come from a sake-brewing background. Her journey started with wine but her destination is most definitely sake.<\/p>\n

Ms Hiraide described her personal sake odyssey. \u201cOctober 1st is known as the opening day for a graduate to start looking for a new job. Normally almost everyone decides before summer on a company or a career, but I believed I could start in October. But almost all my friends had already found a job to go to by that time, and the only vacancies remaining were in TV and radio companies, and the airlines \u2013 so that was the reason that I joined JAL.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother recommended it, too, so I took the exam and, luckily, passed it, and started working for them as a cabin attendant.\u201d Toshie\u2019s face lights up with a laugh as she admits she was no natural as air crew:\u00a0 \u201cI did suffer from\u00a0 airsickness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never thought about a long-term career. Thirty years ago most Japanese women might work for up to three years, find \u2018the right man\u2019, get married and quit the job. By the time you were 25, you were expected to have married \u2013 as we say, \u2019After Christmas, nobody buys a cake!\u2019\u201d More of that infectious laughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was nearly thirty by the time I had met a man and decided to marry. At the same time I had become interested in wine tasting and wine education. Wine tasting was quite a new thing to us. Twenty days a month I was away from Japan, because of my job, and we often went to restaurants. There were not many Japanese restaurants overseas, but some other good restaurants had wine lists, and they fired my interest. I thought, \u2018If I learn about wine, maybe it will be more fun to take a closer look at those wine lists!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my friends at work had passed a sommelier exam \u2013 the Japan Sommelier Association had opened the certificate to cabin attendants. So I went along, and enjoyed the tasting \u2013 people can learn, through wine, about different countries and different languages. I passed the exam in 1992.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany cabin attendants tried to get the certificate, but more experienced sommeliers sometimes referred to us as \u2018paper sommeliers\u2019, having just passed the exam! So I realised that I needed to establish my identity as \u2018Sommelier \u2013 Cabin Attendant\u2019. We were always travelling, so we could visit wineries and taste wines in their home countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met some professional Masters of Wine, and was impressed not just by their knowledge but by their desire to educate and to work with the wine industry to bring it up to date. Then one day I visited a sake brewer \u2013 of course I knew sake, being Japanese \u2013 and I realised that this was a living part of Japan: just rice and water, but with such delicate flavours, and with such a long history. At the same time, I felt sad that so many sake brewers were closing, and that so many Japanese people don\u2019t understand the value of the tradition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1999 the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) offered to open a wine school for JAL. I suggested to JAL that this was a great chance for us: WSET was a great wine education network and if we partner with them this would be good for JAL. So in 2000 the company assigned me to the school for three months. I worked with WSET and management people at that time to help build up the wine school in Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfterwards I went back to flying, and was at the hub in London. I was very happy to meet the WSET people again, and I asked them if there was anything I could bring them from Japan. They were interested in Japanese sake, and said that they knew nothing about it, as sake brewers were not then marketing sake outside Japan. So I brought bottles of sake to London on every trip!<\/p>\n

\"Sake \u201cIn 2003 I introduced sake brewers to WSET at a wine seminar. Mr Sam Harrop, a Master of Wine, attended, and he said that he was interested in sake. He had planned to visit Japan to see sake brewers, so I offered to introduce him to some of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe visited brewers in Kyoto and Shizuoka, and Sam enjoyed it, and was impressed by sake. He sought opportunities to introduce sake to the world, and when he became Co-Chairman of the IWC (International Wine Challenge) he looked at creating a sake category. We didn\u2019t know how to get sake entries, as very few of the sake brewers knew of the IWC at that time. I was a Sake Samurai Co-ordinator; Sake Samurai Association became a partner with IWC, and we introduced the IWC to sake brewers, to help find entries and decide on the sub-categories. We sent a judge from Japan, and created some pages in Japanese for the IWC website.<\/p>\n

\u201cJAL was in decline at that time, so I quit my job in 2010. This was a big decision: I was 49 years old, and if I stayed in the company my job would become busier and the salary would go down; but it would be hard to change my career. Several sake brewers told me that they could help, and I decided to start a small company and begin a new life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had my own house, though I hadn\u2019t finished paying for it, and I thought of selling it to raise funds both for the business and for my daughter. Luckily I had some connection to people in government, in the Ministry of Economy \u2013 the \u2018Cool Japan\u2019 section. They were talking about sake. Then I met people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was interested in how to introduce sake to the world. From 2011 they started to use more sake at embassies, in place of the more usual wine. He also gave a \u2018sake\u2019 lecture to new ambassadors, which I coordinated. It was very important that Japanese diplomats knew about sake, as well as wine.\u00a0 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a great support to our work. In 2012 there was a big change: the government decided that any ministry could have a budget to support the introduction of sake to the world \u2013 previously only the Finance Ministry could undertake this.<\/p>\n

\u201cSake brewers are all over Japan \u2013 family businesses and long histories. If you study French wines, you have to learn the geography of France, so a global programme of sake education is a useful way of introducing Japan to the world. Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka are very well-known to non-Japanese people, but through sake education all the other prefectures can benefit from tourism and exports. Because of my career as a cabin attendant, I appreciated that tourism is a really safe industry, in which people visit and spend money, and come back with good stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese days, local governments around Japan sometimes invite me to lecture, talking about my story, how to introduce sake to the world, how it can promote the region. In February I have three seminars \u2013 I\u2019m so busy now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IWC group are so friendly and so helpful to us. There are 12,000 wine entries, and only 600 sakes \u2013 but this is still the biggest competition outside Japan. Being an IWC sake judge shows that one is a specialist. Once a year at the IWC sake tasting, there is a great opportunity to exchange information and network with new people.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Toshie if sake was being noticed more in Japan. \u201cIn the winter we Japanese have a custom of sending gifts to our friends. The biggest department store in Osaka, Hankyu, sends out a gift catalogue, and last year Hankyu introduced an IWC award-winning sake to the range of gifts: they sold out!<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not so much a specialist, I do not have a sake shop or a restaurant, so my role is to continue explaining, showing that vision, but I never imagined that I would be doing what I do now \u2013 my plan had been to marry after three years and to be a housewife! Now, with IWC, WSET, the gift catalogue, and many other events, people can see what I do and they can understand. Many people are supporting and helping me \u2013 I couldn\u2019t do anything by myself!\u201d<\/p>\n

Toshie Hiraide didn\u2019t plan a career in sake but that career has found her. She has had to make adjustments to her life but she has become respected as a sake \u2018doer\u2019 and an indispensible part of the increasing global sake buzz. It\u2019s a long way from that airsick cabin attendant, but the flying continues apace.<\/p>\n

Visit Sake Samurai here<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interview by Chrissie Walker \u00a9 2018<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read other articles about Sake Samurai here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read other articles about Japanese food, art and culture here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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