Japan · Fermentation; Soy Sauce Brewing; Food and Drink Craft
Kioke shōyu (木桶醤油); kioke-jikomi (barrel brewing)
Brewing soy sauce in large cedar barrels (kioke) that keep the brewery's microbial culture. Traditional brewers say the brewer's task is to nurture conditions in which lactic acid bacteria and yeasts work, and that plastic or steel tanks cannot reproduce the flavor (this is the brewers' view). Yamaroku, a Shōdoshima brewery, ages its Tsuru-bishio soy sauce in barrels for four years.
Risk level: Endangered · Not listed. Washoku was inscribed in 2013; barrel brewing is not a named element.
Kumejima tsumugi (久米島紬) is a hand-woven silk pongee from Kumejima, west of Okinawa Island, and is often called the root of Japanese tsumugi.
Ryukyu raden (螺鈿) is lacquer inlaid with shell, above all yakōgai, the great green turban shell of southern Ryukyuan waters.
Making katsuobushi, the hard dried-bonito block that is shaved for dashi, by boiling bonito fillets, smoking them over hardwood, and curing them with mold in repeated cycles.
Miyako jōfu (宮古上布) is a ramie cloth from Miyakojima and Tarama, woven from hand-spliced yarn so fine that a single warp strand is split to about the width of a hair.
Ryukyu glass (琉球ガラス) is Okinawa's hand-blown glass, made by free-blowing (chūbuki) and mold-blowing (katabuki).
Making soba noodles from buckwheat flour entirely by hand: sifting, mixing water into the flour (mizumawashi), kneading (neri, including 'chrysanthemum kneading'), rolling out with a long pin (nobashi), folding (tatami) and cutting with a…
The roasting, grinding, spicing, and ceremonial brewing of qahwa, Saudi Arabia's traditional Arabic coffee, a preparation historically regarded as a skill worthy of respect, with a host capable of brewing a perfect cup considered a…
The fermentation and distillation of sugarcane molasses into rum, a spirit widely credited as having been literally invented in Barbados.
The preparation of al-bukhoor, scented incense blocks or blends, central to Saudi Arabian hospitality and ritual life, tracing its roots to the ancient Arabian Peninsula's historic position at the crossroads of the global incense trade,…
The small-scale, family-run distillation of clairin (kleren in Haitian Creole, meaning 'clear') from fresh, hand-harvested sugarcane juice, practiced at over 500 small rural distilleries (gildives/guildives) across Haiti with minimal…
The fermenting, drying, and hand-processing of Trinitario cocoa — a hybrid variety first developed in Trinidad itself, combining the fragile, exquisitely flavored Criollo cacao that Spanish missionaries cultivated in the Montserrat Hills…
The lefse making tradition — the production of the thin Norwegian potato flatbread that is the defining traditional food of the Norwegian Christmas and everyday table.