Awamori Notes

As an amateur and beginner investigator into the Awamori culture, it strikes me as unfair to notice that in any book or magazine consulted so far on the subject in Japan, the manufacturing process starts with a discrete remark about the raw ingredient being rice from Thailand, without expanding on that single element I for one find fascinating. With so much rice imported from Thailand to manufacture an expanding volume of Awamori for so many years, the Thai rice economic trail must be quite thick and heavily traveled. Not a single remark appears on that matter. Is this rice issue so delicate that it is kept in the background? After all, how can so much Thai rice has been allowed to transit for so many years when some 10 years ago, no foreign rice was allowed in Japan? Is it a marketing strategy to wipe out from the Awamori narrative any reference of the Thai rice business? This is something puzzling I have found no clue whatever so far. For me, the knowledge that Awamori is made from Thai rice makes it even more appealing and generate curiosity in the details of that fact. In one book I flipped today in a bookshop of Tokyo, I found a reference to a brand that seems to use rice from Taiwan. Yet another ingredient to spark added interest. The contemporary international trade facts surrounding the Awamori business is added value to the exoticism the drink already conveys.

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