Kuchikami-no-sake

口噛みの酒

Culture & History

定义

The earliest form of sake, made by chewing rice and spitting it into a vessel. Salivary amylase enzymes in saliva converted the rice starch to sugar, enabling fermentation by wild yeast. This practice was performed by young women in ancient Japan.

深度解析

Kuchikami-no-sake (mouth-chewed sake) represents humanity's earliest understanding of enzyme-driven fermentation. Ancient texts including the Kojiki (712 CE) and local chronicles describe the practice. The selection of young women as brewers may have been connected to Shinto purity concepts and the association of women with food production. Kuchikami-no-sake was made obsolete by the discovery that koji mold could replace saliva for starch conversion — one of the most important innovations in food history. The practice has been popularized in modern Japanese culture through the anime film Kimi no Na wa (Your Name).

相关术语

Kura 蔵 Koji 麹

Embed on your site — NihonshuFYI

Add the widget to any webpage using a script tag.

<div data-nihonshufyi="glossary" data-slug="kuchikami-no-sake"></div>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/nihonshufyi-embed@1/dist/embed.min.js" defer></script>

Embed using a standard iframe — works in any CMS.

<iframe src="https://nihonshufyi.com/iframe/glossary/kuchikami-no-sake/" width="100%" height="480" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" title="NihonshuFYI glossary widget"></iframe>

Paste the URL into WordPress, Medium, or any oEmbed-aware editor.

https://nihonshufyi.com/glossarys/kuchikami-no-sake/

Add a badge linking back to NihonshuFYI.

<a href="https://nihonshufyi.com/glossarys/kuchikami-no-sake/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  <img src="https://nihonshufyi.com/badge/site.svg" alt="NihonshuFYI" height="20">
</a>

Preview:

Use the NihonshuFYI WordPress plugin shortcode.

[drinkfyi-glossary site="nihonshufyi" slug="kuchikami-no-sake"]

Use as a native HTML custom element in modern browsers.

<nihonshufyi-glossary slug="kuchikami-no-sake" theme="light"></nihonshufyi-glossary>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/nihonshufyi-embed@1/dist/embed.min.js" defer></script>

Docs →