Japan · Fermentation; Brewing; Koji Culture; Food and Drink Craft
Nihonshu no dentō-teki sakezukuri; kōji-zukuri; tōji (chief brewer) and kurabito (brewery workers)
The brewing of nihonshu (sake) from rice, water and koji mold, led by a chief brewer (tōji) who directs a team of brewery workers (kurabito). Koji mold is grown on steamed rice to turn starch into sugar, and the brewer controls temperature and humidity by sight and touch. Sake is made in three-stage 'multiple parallel fermentation' in which saccharification and fermentation occur at once, in a process of about 60 days. The same koji-based skills underlie shochu, awamori and mirin.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Inscribed in 2024 (19.COM) on UNESCO's Representative List: 'Traditional knowledge and skills of sake-making with koji mold in Japan' (nomination 01977). Also on Japan's national ICH inventory (December 2021).
Light, strong everyday objects made by layering washi over a base of paper, bamboo or wood and coating them with persimmon tannin (kakishibu) or urushi lacquer.
Two textiles made from washi in Shiroishi, Miyagi Prefecture.
Ceramics from the Tōnō region of eastern Gifu Prefecture, in a collective name for about fifteen traditional types.
Counted-thread embroidery of the Nanbu region of southeastern Aomori Prefecture, centered on Hachinohe, in which cotton thread is stitched over an even number of warp threads of pale-blue hemp cloth, producing long horizontal diamonds.
Braided silk cord made on a braiding stand (kumidai) in the Goshogawara and Kanagi area of western Aomori Prefecture, dyed with apple bark, leaves and flowers and with indigo.
Glazed ceramics made in and around Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, from local iron-rich clay, glazed with black tenmoku or with an apple-ash glaze made from burnt apple tree wood, sometimes blended with rice-straw ash in a namako ('sea…
The making of Westfälischer Schinken (Westphalian ham) — the slow-smoked, long-aged ham from the Westphalia region, Germany's most historically significant ham tradition and one of Europe's oldest documented smoked meat products (first…
Peru's national grape spirit, distilled in a single uninterrupted pass from freshly fermented grape must, with no water added, no barrel aging, and no redistillation — a defining set of restrictions that legally distinguishes true pisco…
A wild-agave spirit distilled from the roasted, fermented heart (cormo) of Agave cocui, a native plant of Venezuela's semi-arid northwest, produced exclusively and artisanally in the Pecaya parish of Sucre municipality, Falcón state.
The preparation of harissa, Tunisia's national chili paste condiment, by sun-drying Baklouti red peppers, deseeding and grinding them, and seasoning the resulting paste with salt, garlic, and coriander using a pestle and mortar or manual…
The daily hand-shaping and baking of the baguette, France's iconic long, crusty loaf made from only four ingredients — wheat flour, water, salt, and leaven or yeast — through a precise sequence of weighing, mixing, kneading, fermentation,…
The manual, entirely hand-performed pollination of date palms in Tunisia's southern oases, centered on the Djerid region (Tozeur, Kebili) and the historic heartland of the prized Deglet Nour variety.