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Article Excerpt
The significant fact about alcohol and drinking in Japan is that alcohol has never been regarded as a major social problem, and few measures against its production or use have been taken. In this respect Japan stands nearly alone in the industrialized world. It comes close to countries like France or Italy, but even in these countries temperance sentiments did run high towards the end of the last century and affected the way alcohol has been regarded (Barrows 1979; Cottino 1985).
Regarding drinking patterns and attitudes towards alcohol, this fact has had far-reaching consequences that can be observed in today's Japanese society. In the following I will discuss, after some historical remarks, the consumption trends of various beverages since the 1950s, the period when major changes in consumption patterns have taken place. I will then look at the Japanese drinking etiquette and attitudes towards drunkenness, drawing upon ethnographic data, and focusing on the pattern of "heroic drinking" that is displayed at male drinking sessions. These considerations highlight the changes that have been taking place, but they also reveal the archaic aspects of Japanese drinking behavior. The discussion on the permanence and change of drinking patterns suggests that in order to understand why traditions survive it is necessary to take into account the social contexts of alcohol use.
They are fond of liquor
So it was said about the inhabitants of the country of Wa, Japan, in the "History of the Kingdom of Wei," c. A.D. 297, the oldest Chinese document in which Japan is described (Tsunoda et al. 1964:7). Indeed, through history alcohol has been held in high esteem by the Japanese, as an indispensable tool for the establishment and maintenance of social relations. According to Shimizu (1990) one is entitled to speak of "an alcoholic social system," dependence on alcohol at the societal level.
Sake, brewed from rice, containing 15-17 percent alcohol, has traditionally been the beverage of choice in Japan. The traditions of sake reach back to the beginning of rice cultivation and have been closely linked with it ever since.
Religious meanings have always been attached to sake. In religious rituals sake was first offered to gods, and then shared by mortals in naorai, the communal feast held after a religious ritual proper. Originally naorai meant that gods and mortals shared foods together (Befu 1986; Mitsukuni & Tsune 1989). The practice of offering sake to gods is still very much alive, as indicated by the annual offerings of the new harvest at numerous Shinto shrines in sake-producing regions around the country. But ritual uses of alcohol have not precluded purely convivial drinking or drunkenness, as revealed by a number of passages in Ko-ji-ki (1932; original A.D. 712) and Nihongi (1956; original A.D. 720). Early Japanese seemed to think that the bond between people that is created by sake extends even from the brewer to the drinker (Nihongi 1956:244-245):
The man who brewed This august liquor, Setting up on the mortar His drum Singing all the while He must have brewed it. This august liquor Is exquisitely more and more delightful. Sa! Sa!
The art of distillation was learned from the Portugese in the 16th century, and it gave rise to the popularity of shochu, a white spirit containing 25 percent alcohol that can be simply produced using diverse raw materials. Beer, which nowadays is the most popular alcoholic drink, was introduced to the Japanese by the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki. The first Japanese brewery was established in 1873 and the first beer hall opened in 1899 (Seidensticker 1983:95). Whisky production started around the turn of the century; it first became popular among military personnel in the late 1930s, and more widely after World War II. Despite some recent diversification of taste, these four beverages--sake, shochu, beer, and whisky--still in 1992 accounted for about 94% of the total absolute alcohol consumption.
In feudal society, with huge differentials between the aristocracy and the common people, drinking habits necessarily became differentiated. At one end of the scale, there were exquisite brands of sake and the refined manners of the court. At the other end there was poverty that effectively limited the use of alcohol, apart from special occasions when drinking might become quite unrestrained. Such a pattern of drinking has been noted in many places around the world, and according to Yanagida (1956:32) it used to be typical in feudal Japan as well:
In the old life of villages sake was thought of only in connection with celebrations, and people had few chances to drink at all. On the other hand, when the time came they seem to have done a thorough job. The beverage was brewed at home for each occasion, and if any was left after the festival, it was passed around again the next day and the next until not a drop was left.
The industrialization and urbanization of the Meiji era brought breweries established by large capitalists, widespread drinking, appearance of village taverns, and "the practice of buying sake by the bottle instead of making it at home as the farmers formerly had done. In effect sake became one of the delights available to anyone who could pay for it" (Yanagida 1956:41).
Gordon (1985:412) notes that although Japanese labor relations today are different from those in Europe and America, the social relations of industrial production resembled those in the West at the outset of industrialization in many respects. Unlike the standard views of diligent labor as a factor of the successful modernization of the Japanese economy:
Japanese workers of this era were neither keen on taking orders nor enthusiastically committed to their jobs, and persuading them to submit to the discipline of factory labor was no easy task (p. 27).
Workers traditionally took the day off on the day after payday, and many companies ... accepted this as unavoidable.... The wives of the workers, anxious as to whether their husbands will really bring home the money on payday, gather in a group around the factory gate, demanding that their husbands turn over the wages [before they drink them away] (p. 28).
Similar observations were made by several missionaries and other foreign observers at the turn of the century (Linhart 1988:271). Contemporary surveys painted "a grim picture of a life marked by incessant domestic quarrels and indifference to the education of children" (Gordon 1985:26). (1) It was only gradually that factory discipline, compulsory education, and military service turned the Japanese into the hard workers of latter days, who sacrifice their private life for the sake of company and country. On the whole it has been judged that industrialization and urbanization in Japan proceeded rather smoothly, without any massive disorganization of the social structure as in many western countries (Vogel 1967:104).
It now seems to be a nearly-forgotten historical footnote that the situation around the turn of the century nonetheless gave rise to reactions quite similar to those in Europe and North America:
Intellectuals objected that people had become indiscriminate drinkers, and there arose a movement in favor of restricting or prohibiting sake. In 1884 the Japan Temperance Society was organized, with the approval and support of such famous men as Nishi Amane, Kato Hiroyuki, and Mishima Tsuyoshi. Then, in 1890 the Japan Prohibition League was created, and this was followed by the appearance of many similar organizations, whose membership gradually increased. A bill to prohibit drinking by minors was introduced into the Diet in 1900, but it was opposed in various quarters and did not become law until 1922. (Yanagida 1956:41-42). (2)
None of these endeavors had any major impact on the alcohol use of the Japanese, however. Entrenched drinking patterns could not be easily eradicated, and the strong vested interests of the...
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