Chronicle of Hekinan

Prologue

Why Hekinan? — Why the Land Chose Brewing

序章 — なぜ碧南だったのか・土地が醸造を選んだ理由

Introduction

Hekinan, in Aichi Prefecture, is a port town of some seventy thousand people — by no means large. Yet this town holds one singular fact found nowhere else in Japan. Miso, soy sauce, vinegar, mirin — very nearly all of Japan's fermented seasonings are made in this one area. Hekinan in particular is a rare land that holds two origins at once: "the oldest mirin in Japan," and "the birthplace of white soy sauce and white dashi."1

Why did so diverse a brewing culture gather in a single small town? It was no accident. The terrain, the rivers, the sea, and the rice made this land choose brewing. In this chapter we wish to begin the story by reading the land of Hekinan itself. For fermentation, pressed to its core, is the accumulation of "what can happen only in this place."

I. A Land Surrounded on Three Sides by Water

Hekinan lies at the mouth of the Yahagi River. Its territory is a flat land of the Hekikai plateau and the Yahagi's alluvium: to the north the lake of Aburagafuchi, to the east the Yahagi River, to the west and south Kinuura Bay — surrounded, that is, on three sides by water.2

This condition — being surrounded by water — is the starting point of everything in Hekinan, the brewing town.

The Yahagi River is a first-class river of some 117 kilometres, spanning the three prefectures of Nagano, Gifu and Aichi and pouring into Mikawa Bay.3 Granite is widely distributed through its basin, and because the weathered, friable granite layers wash downstream, the Yahagi is a typical "sandy river."3 The alluvium this river brings shaped the plains of western Mikawa, Hekinan among them, and nurtured a rich granary. From of old, shipping based on Chita Bay and grain cultivation along the Yahagi basin have sustained the industry of this land.4

Call to mind what brewing requires: good water, abundant rice, and the means to carry out what is made. All three were present in Hekinan from the first, as a matter of terrain.

II. From Rice to Sake, from Sake to Mirin

For a brewing culture to take root, rice and sake are needed first. And Mikawa and its surroundings were, from of old, a land where sake-brewing flourished.

In the Edo period, the neighbouring Chita peninsula is said to have held more than two hundred sake breweries.5 That so great a sake-brewing region lay close at hand became the decisive factor in the birth of Hekinan's mirin culture.

The course of it forms a single, elegant chain. The mirin house Kakuya Bunjirō Shōten tells its own history thus: mirin-brewing in this land began when they received sake lees — a by-product of sake — from nearby breweries, and used the kasutori shōchū distilled from those lees in the brewing of mirin.5

Here is the singularity of Mikawa's brewing culture. Across the country, it is common for a sake brewery to make mirin as well. In Mikawa, however, because the raw material for the shōchū could be had from neighbouring sake breweries, breweries specialising in mirin alone grew up.5 In the mid-Shōwa years (the 1950s and 60s), there are said to have been some twenty mirin breweries in this land.5

Geography nurtures rice; rice gives birth to sake; the by-product of sake raises up mirin. Hekinan's mirin is, as it were, the crystallisation of this land's farming, its sea, and its sake.

III. Mirin — Memory of a Sweet Wine

Today, mirin is known as a seasoning for cooking. But its beginning was "a sweet wine for drinking."

The origins of mirin admit several accounts. Two are representative: the theory of Japanese origin, which holds that shōchū was added to aged wines such as nerizake and shirozake to keep them from spoiling; and the theory of Chinese transmission, which traces it to a sweet wine, miirin, brought from China.6 Which is correct is uncertain, but descriptions of "mirin" already appear in documents of the Warring States period, and old books record it as miirin-shu or birin-shu, suggesting a fine wine of faint sweetness.6

The method of production was established in the Edo period.6 When mirin joined with soy sauce and miso as a seasoning, and married the dashi of kelp and bonito, the foundation of Japanese cuisine was formed. Sheen, lustre, aroma — mirin changed the very way the Japanese table is enjoyed.6 The proper method and history of mirin's production are set out, too, in materials of the National Tax Agency, as "the history of hon-mirin (true mirin)."7 How mirin is to be placed within the early-modern sake-brewing industry has been an object of scholarly research as well.8

That Hekinan holds a brewery calling itself "the oldest mirin in Japan" rests upon this long accumulation of history.

IV. "White" — Another Invention

Alongside mirin, the other origin in which Hekinan takes pride is white soy sauce and white dashi. Hekinan is held to be "the birthplace of white soy sauce and white dashi."9

White soy sauce is a soy sauce paler in colour even than light (usukuchi) soy sauce, and for drawing out the natural colours of an ingredient it has no equal.10 Though often thought to be for Japanese food alone, it is used in Western and Chinese cooking too, and the white-soy makers centred on Hekinan have met demand across the country.10 At a brewery here that has numbered two hundred years since its founding and continues to brew in wooden vats, specialising in white soy sauce, some eighty wooden vats are still in active service.10

If dark (koikuchi) soy sauce "asserts itself by colour and aroma," white soy sauce stands on the very opposite thought: "to set off the ingredient by adding no colour." This contrast itself tells the depth of Mikawa's brewing culture.

V. The Land Chose Brewing

Let us bind together what we have seen.

Brewing culture gathered in Hekinan because the following conditions overlapped in this land, as terrain and as history. The alluvial plain and good water the Yahagi River brings.23 The waters surrounding it on three sides, and shipping based on Chita Bay.4 The densely clustered sake-brewing region close at hand, and the mirin-specialist breweries raised up from its by-products.5 And a warm climate and natural setting.11

Brewing is the work of changing ingredients over time, borrowing the action of microbes. It comes into being only when all of these are present together: the water of that place, the rice of that place, the climate of that place, the hands of the people of that place. It is for this reason that brewing — unlike industry, which can make the same thing anywhere — becomes "what can happen only in this place."

It was not Hekinan that chose brewing. It was the land that made Hekinan choose brewing.

The answer to the question raised in this prologue — why Hekinan? — will be deepened, one by one, in the chapters that follow: toward mirin, white soy sauce, the cargo ships, and the philosophy that has long gazed upon fermentation. The journey begins with knowing this land.

Notes & Sources

This is the prologue of the Chronicle of Hekinan (white paper). The facts stated rest on the sources cited. Where several accounts exist — as with the origins of mirin — the existence of several accounts is made plain. For statements where direct consultation of primary sources (city and municipal histories, etc.) has not yet been completed, corroboration by primary sources will be reinforced in future revisions.

Footnotes

  1. "Tour the Long-Established Breweries of Mikawa Mirin and Rare White Soy Sauce in the Brewing Town of Hekinan," Aichi Fermented-Food Tour, "Umami Prefecture Aichi" portal. https://hakko-aichi.jp/course/detail/4/ ↩

  2. "Hekinan," Wikipedia (on the city hall's elevation of 6.9 m, the Hekikai plateau and Yahagi alluvium, and the geography enclosed by Aburagafuchi, the Yahagi River and Kinuura Bay). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/碧南市 ↩ ↩2

  3. "Yahagi River," Wikipedia (on its length of 117 km, basin area of 1,830 km², and its character as a granite-derived sandy river); see also the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, "Rivers of Japan — Chūbu — Yahagi River." https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/矢作川 / https://www.mlit.go.jp/river/toukei_chousa/kasen/jiten/nihon_kawa/0507_yahagi/0507_yahagi_00.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. "Yamashin Jōzō (Hekinan, Aichi)," Shokunin Shōyu (on this being "a land where shipping based on Chita Bay and grain cultivation along the Yahagi basin flourished"). https://s-shoyu.com/kura/yamashin/ ↩ ↩2

  5. "One shō of Rice, One shō of Mirin: Beloved by an Unchanging Method, a Glutinous-Rice Liqueur to the World — 'Sanshū Mikawa Mirin,'" Marukome (remarks of Ms. Fumiko Kakuya of Kakuya Bunjirō Shōten; on the number of Chita-peninsula sake breweries in the Edo period, the rise of mirin-brewing from kasutori shōchū, the mirin-specialist breweries, and the some twenty breweries of the mid-Shōwa years). https://www.marukome.co.jp/marukome_omiso/hakkoubishoku/20250508/21396/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. "The History of Mirin," Kakuya Bunjirō Shōten, Sanshū Mikawa Mirin (on the theories of Japanese origin and Chinese transmission, documents of the Warring States period, the establishment of the method in the Edo period, and the forming of the foundation of Japanese cuisine). https://mikawamirin.jp/about/history ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. National Tax Agency, "The History of Hon-Mirin (Methods of Producing Hon-Mirin and Similar Seasonings)" (official material). https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/sake/koujikin/pdf/0021012-102_05.pdf ↩

  8. Noriko Matsumoto, "A Historical Study of Mirin — As Part of the Early-Modern Sake-Brewing Industry," Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Nara Women's University (research report funded by the Tobacco Academic Studies Center). https://www.tasc.or.jp/assist/archives/2022/pdf/2023_05B.pdf ↩

  9. "Shōryūdō Japan Fine-Sake Route: Hekinan" (on "the birthplace of white soy sauce and white dashi" and "the oldest mirin in Japan"). https://go-centraljapan.jp/route/sake/ja/area/aichi-hekinan/ ↩

  10. "Yamashin Jōzō (Hekinan, Aichi)," Shokunin Shōyu (on the character of white soy sauce, its use in Western and Chinese cooking, the two hundred years since founding, and the some eighty wooden vats). https://s-shoyu.com/kura/yamashin/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. "Shōryūdō Japan Fine-Sake Route: Hekinan" (on the warm climate and natural setting, and the industrial structure beginning with brewing). https://go-centraljapan.jp/route/sake/ja/area/aichi-hekinan/ ↩