Creating a wine heritage in Japan

Abstract

This paper examines how Japanese grape wine production has been promoted as cultural heritage, through the collaboration of local official and private actors. In 2018, Japan’s wine making was designated as a national cultural heritage through a governmental program called “Japan Heritage,” highlighting the history associated with wine production in a specific area in Yamanashi Prefecture, a long-standing wine-making region in Japan. In this creation of heritage, historical narratives of wine production have been rediscovered and invented. Essentially, this heritagization strategy is not preserving wine culture but creating one, developing touristic resources and stimulating local economy. The politics of making wine heritage in Japan reveals a national governance of food culture with the goal of making Japan a global tourism destination and promoting rural development.

Keywords:

• Wine heritage
• invention of history
• culinary politics
• Japan’s wine tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For example, Japan’s national television station NHK featured on the recent development of wine making in Japan and the positive evaluation received from international wine awards and critics (NHK 2016).

2 According to Gotō (2018), it is certain that wine producing was conducted at the home of Shogun Hosokawa Tadatoshi between 1627 and 1630. However, there was not any account of it after 1630.

3 According to the survey I conducted during April 2017 and April 2019 among sixty-two Japanese undergraduate students at three universities located in Tokyo and seventy-eight Japanese women in their twenties and thirties living in Mitaka-shi of Tokyo, only five of them, including two students and three women, claimed that they knew Yamanashi produced wine. These five people had grown up in or near the area. This is partly because Japanese domestically made wine has not been widely consumed since the 1970s, as the consumption of imported wine has increased rapidly. During the late 1990s and the middle 2010s, the consumption of domestic wine accounted for about 30 percent of the overall wine market (Mercian 2017).

4 Popular magazines and books about wine-making regions in Japan increased around the middle 2010s. For example, the magazine The Wine Kingdom, which mainly introduces Japanese readers to overseas wine and wine regions, published an issue introducing Japan’s wineries in 2014 (Yasuda 2014, 112–113). Moreover, according to my interview with the organizer of the annual event called Japan Wine Festival in 2017, one of the purposes for organizing that festival, which exclusively featured Japanese wine, was to increase the awareness of domestic wine among the Japanese public.

5 For the list of the twenty-three sites, go to https://japan-heritage.bunka.go.jp/ja/stories/story060/index.html

6 Meiji Shrine in central Tokyo may also be thought of as being associated with wine. However, it displays French wine barrels representing the Meiji Emperor’s ambition to modernize his country. It is not a representation of Japan’s own wine culture. Moreover, unlike Ichimiya Asama Shrine, wine is not used as a libation to the gods (or spirit of the Meiji Emperor) and it is not offered to prayers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) 17K13853, “The Cultural Construction of the Wine Tourism Experience in Japan, China, and Australia.”

Notes on contributors

Chuanfei Wang

Chuanfei Wang earned her PhD in Global Studies from Sophia University, Tokyo. She is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the same University and adjunct faculty member teaching Sociology at the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES Abroad), Sophia University, Hosei University, and Japan Women's University in Tokyo. She is author of numerous articles and book chapters on the Japanese wine industry, the globalization of Japanese culinary culture, and Japanese wine tourism.