[/floatr]KIPPO: British master brewer making high-grade sake
Fields and mountains are covered with fresh greenery. There is an old-fashioned sake brewery on a small hill about five minutes'walk from Kawachi-iwafune Station of the JR Gakkentoshi Line. It is the brewery of Daimon Shuzo Co. of Katano City in Osaka Prefecture. There, Philip Harper, 41, the only foreign "toji" (master brewer) in Japan, is brewing high-grade sake with traditional techniques featuring handwork. Harper hails from Cornwall in England. In July 1988, the Oxford graduate came to Japan as an English teacher under the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) program and taught at an Osaka senior high school and other places for two years...In 2004, he was successful in an exam to be qualified as a "Nanbu toji" in Iwate Prefecture. "Fourteen people took the exam, and seven of them passed it," he said...more...
Harper is the author of The Insider's Guide to Sake and recently contributed this piece to the Japan Times.
