Wood spirits: How Japan made the world’s first liquor from trees

There’s a folks story that has been handed down for generations in Ojiya, a small metropolis in Japan’s northwestern Niigata Prefecture recognized for its conventional textile trade and nationally acknowledged crop, the koshihikari number of rice.

In line with “The Legends of Ojiya,” a ebook revealed in 1979, close to the city’s Mitsuboshi-ya liquor retailer as soon as stood a centuries-old cedar, planted again in 1658. There was nothing particular in regards to the tree, goes the story, however in the future it started to leak sake — a lot of sake.

“It was the top of 1916,” the narrator says. “One morning, I woke as much as discover a cut up within the trunk of a cedar. Whereas I used to be considering, ‘That’s unusual,’ a white, watery substance started to movement out with a gurgling sound.”