By YASUAKI OSHIKA/ Senior Staff Writer
November 4, 2022 at 08:00 JST
Takeyasu Shojima holds a “shuwan” sake drinking cup. (Yasuaki Oshika)
FUKUOKA--As the owner of a liquor shop specializing in sake, Takeyasu Shojima always felt something was not quite right with the shape of cups for his favorite tipple.
His dilemma was further exacerbated by moves by sake makers in recent years to tinker with brewing methods to achieve more sophisticated tastes.
Still, Shojima, 41, felt that “guinomi” gulping cups left something to be desired in making use of the full potential of refined sake.
He disdained the idea of drinking sake from wine glasses because he equated it with eating white rice served on Western tableware.
In April, Shojima approached a Karatsu ware potter to explain his conundrum, describing a sake cup in a certain style and shape. The potter said it sounded like “tabi-jawan,” a type of cup used for making green tea outdoors.
When Shojima sampled sake from a tabi-jawan cup, he realized he was on to something.
He added improvements for various features, including the point where the lips touch, and named the cup “shuwan” (sake bowl), a term rarely used in Japan.
He approached 14 potters specializing in Iga, Shigaraki and Seto ware, who were more than happy to join hands and produce sake bowls to cultivate a new market for shuwan since demand for traditional tea utensils continued to remain sluggish.
They agreed that the shuwan made sake taste different from drinking it from a wine glass.
A sake brewery employee also noted that sake from the same bottle tasted different when it was drunk from different shuwan cups.
Shojima opened shuwan gallery Tenshudo in Tokyo’s Minami-Aoyama district in September.
Shuwan cups don’t come cheap, though, as they sell for between 30,000 yen ($200) and 50,000 yen each.
Still, a three-month stock almost sold out in just two weeks.
Part of the fun is finding the right cup to bring out the best taste of sake.
“I want to create a culture of drinking sake from shuwan,” Shojima said.
His business card says he is the “inventor of shuwan.”
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