The Scent of Sake (57 page)

BOOK: The Scent of Sake

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What was it the country women in the south said? Rie remembered hearing the ancient folktale from O-Natsu. A woman should not live to see her great-grandchild. Food was too scarce in those poor farming districts. So a son took his old mother on his back when her great-grandchild was born, took her up to a mountaintop and left her there to die.

Rie smiled and allowed a tear to run down her cheek at the painful thought. There was no one to see. How fortunate that she was Rie, daughter of Kinzaemon IX, widow of Kinzaemon X, mother, yes mother, of Kinzaemon XI, and grandmother of Kinzaemon XIII of the House of Omura, and now White Tiger was number one in all Japan. She sat perfectly straight before the Butsudan, inhaled the yeasty aroma and smiled.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many individuals who offered suggestions, encouragement, inspiration, and technical assistance during the writing of this novel. My agent, Natasha Kern, said, “I’m the perfect agent for your book,” and, in fact, was. Editors Carol Craig and Carrie Feron believed in the book from its inception and guided it with unerring vision through to completion.

A host of friends offered continual support, among them Paul Wood, Sue Riford, and Pat Palmer on Maui; in Boulder, members of my writing group—Thora Chinnery, Diana Vari, Carol Dow, and Sherri Jennings—as well as other friends: Hua-ling Hu, Takeko and Art Sakakura, Keiko Beer, Billie Corrigan, Sherry Oaks, Jody Berman, Faye Kleeman, Polly Christensen, Mariko Sumida (Honolulu), and Kitty Felion (Erie, Pennsylvania). I am immensely grateful to them, as well as to Masami Yabune in Japan and also to those who helped me through the idiosyncracies of computers: Sherry Oaks, Nancy Fritch, and Polly Christensen.

I was fortunate to have guidance and information on the his-

366 Acknowledgments

tory of the sake industry, Japan’s most ancient industry, from two leading authorities, Professor Manabu Yunoki of Kwansei Gakuin University and Professor Sakurai of Chiba University.

The book would never have been written without the many brewers who shared stories of their families, their brewing traditions, and the technology of the brewing process. As I traveled from Akita, Niigata, and Fukushima in the north to Kyushu in the south, brewers were more generous of their time and hospi-tality than I could have hoped. In some cases I was a guest for a week at a time and had an opportunity to observe brewing at each stage and to explore the inner recesses of the architecture of house and kura. I was given lectures on brewing by brewmasters, I tasted enticing grades and varieties, and was wined and dined along with brewers at ceremonies celebrating both the start and end of the brewing season. Out of respect for traditions of brewing houses I do not here identify individual brewers who have been so kind and helpful. It is my hope they will realize the depth of my gratitude.

This is a work of fiction. While certain incidents are based on historical events and eras, the characters depicted are products of the author’s imagination.

Joyce Chapman Lebra Boulder, Colorado

2008

About the Author

J
oyce
L
ebra

JOYCE LEBRA,
a recognized authority on the cultures of Japan, India, and Asia/Pacific women, is professor emerita of Colorado University. She lived in Japan many years and authored twelve nonfiction books.

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Credits

Cover photograph © Peter Adams/zefa/Corbis Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SCENT OF SAKE. Copyright © 2009 by Joyce Lebra. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-177084-5

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