Member-only story
A Traditional Foreigner
On the things that become part of a place without coming from within it.
Author’s note — First written in Japanese, then translated into English with AI.
A full making-record appears at the end.
Awamori is Okinawa’s local spirit — distilled on the islands, aged in a subtropical climate, made with black kōji, and carried through Ryūkyū’s history for centuries.
Turn the bottle over, though, and the label reads rice (Thai).
You might feel a small disappointment. When we travel, we look for what belongs to the ground beneath us: vegetables from the next field, fish from the sea in front, wine from vines rooted in the local soil. Meeting something that came from where you are standing has its own quiet pleasure.
So when Okinawa’s traditional spirit turns out to be made from Thai rice, it is tempting to conclude: it used to be more local. Globalization took the traditional ingredients away.
The story is not that simple. According to the Okinawa Sake Brewers Association, the origin of the rice used in the earliest awamori is not fully documented. By the late Meiji era, breweries were working with rice from Vietnam, Myanmar, and Taiwan; Thai rice took hold from the late Taishō period onward. The supply address keeps changing. The one…
