Photo/Illutration Bottles of the Ogata Koan brand of sake (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

I came across a sake with an intriguing name. The bottle’s label bore the name Ogata Koan, as well as a portrait of a man I vaguely recalled seeing in my school history textbook.

Ogata Koan (1810-1863) was a late Edo Period (1603-1867) physician and scholar of “rangaku” Western learning who was a mentor to Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) and other prominent figures of the era.

Wondering why his name ended up on the sake label, I flew to the Ehime Prefecture city of Seiyo where the beverage originated.

From what I learned, the eponymous brand was discontinued four years ago because of torrential rains that caused flooding in western Japan in 2018.

Until then, the brewery, Ogata Shuzo, kept selling this sake for about 30 years since registering the trademark. But the brewery was damaged from flooding of the Hijikawa river in 2018, and the owner decided to close for good.

“The brand’s revival owes to a series of lucky coincidences,” noted Suguru Seike, a section chief of the city’s department of industry.

After giving up on sake production, the brewery owner wanted to use the site for cultural and intellectual gatherings. He consulted Isao Sato, an Osaka University professor who had visited Seiyo many times as a volunteer disaster relief worker.

Together with Seike and others, Sato established an organization to oversee the undertaking and focused on the revival of the Ogata Koan brand of sake as the symbol of post-disaster reconstruction.

And through a collaboration with Osaka University, one of whose predecessors was a “Tekijuku” school established in 1838 by Ogata Koan, a family tree search revealed that ancestors of Ogata Koan and those of the Ogata brewery were related during the Sengoku Jidai (period of civil wars from 1467 to 1590).

The Ogata Koan trademark was transferred to Osaka University, and a sake brewery company in Hyogo Prefecture was commissioned with a full makeover, including package renewal.

A tasting party was held in spring last year at the brewery, attended by the city’s mayor and residents.

“Reconstruction demands hard work and tends to keep people on edge, but this undertaking was a welcome change that cheered us all for the first time in a while,” Seike said.

He also noted that the local community has since been further enlivened by a decision to use, for the first time, a brand of brewer’s rice called “Shizukuhime” produced in Ehime Prefecture.

I tasted Ogata Koan “nama genshu” (unrefined sake). It was mellow yet refreshing.

A new typhoon is approaching the Japanese archipelago. Looking at the swirling rain clouds on a weather map, I savored the tasty sake of people who refused to yield to flood damage.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 23

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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