Brewery Hierarchy - Sake Making Structure

0:19Welcome to Sake Deep Dive, the sake podcast for the beyond beginner. I am Jim Ryan, hosting as always with my friend and co-host Andrew Russell. How are you doing today, Andy? I am good, Jim. It is the season to be jolly and all that. That's right. We are winding down 2025. What a year it has been in every possible sense of the word. So, you know, it is the retrospective season, Andy. Looking back on 2025, what was that for you? Pretty crazy. to be honest yeah I haven't stopped brewing which is that the first time yes it is I've never worked in a brewery that that brews all the time that just doesn't stop not even a summer break and it's kind of crazy I think back to last October I turned up at Cane BC ready for my third season And I finished that and I had about five or six days during which time I moved apartment.

1:26I moved to a completely different city and then I started brewing and here I am. It's Christmas. It's been Ato Yuma, as they say in Japanese. It's just completely over in a blink. Yeah, it's a little wild because, you know, I can remember particularly, you know, I'm watching those months with barely a break. I can just see, like in every podcast recording, I'd see you on the camera, and it just looked like you were wasting away towards the end of the season. So yeah, it seems better now, I think. It doesn't seem to be quite so draining. I think part of that is getting used to a new brewery. Speak to any brewer that's moved to a different company, and they'll tell you it's a very stressful thing to do.

2:17Everything's different. All four breweries I've worked, they've all had their own way of doing things. And some of it's quite, well, it seems very trivial, like where to put this tool or how to turn that screw. They all have their own little idiosyncrasies and it takes a while to get into the same rhythm as your fellow brewers, but it's taken a bit longer than usual at this current brewer. And I think it's because of, it is quite unusual that they brew without any kind of respite. It just keeps on going and going. But we are getting time off over new year, which is going to be longer than I normally get.

3:07So every cloud has a silver lining and all that. Oh, great. Good to hear it. Yeah. Right. So, you know, and as you mentioned, we are winding down. The end of the year is here. And in Japan, the end of the year is, it is probably the biggest sake drinking and selling season there is. everybody's going out for for what we call bonen kai parties to forget the end of the year and as the year opens we'll be into the shinnen kai the new year's parties and you know the sake does flow like water and uh you know for us as as the the two sake nerds that we are um it's also a time to think about you know the things that we're doing um you know we're going to be celebrating a new year and in fact this uh this podcast will drop on the new year so let us be the first to wish you all a happy 2026 happy new year kampai yes thank you to all our listeners and especially our patrons yeah um you know we do have a really significant base of patreon patrons and um you You know, it does make doing this a lot easier to have that support.

4:28You know, we've been at this for a long time as things go. I don't know how many podcasts make it for, gosh, four years. Was it 2021 or was it 2020 when we dropped the first episode? It had to be 2021. I'm going to have to look back, but put it this way. I was in Hiroshima when we started doing this. That's right. And I think we got about a year out of while I was living there. Yeah. And then I've had three seasons at Kenbishi and now I'm in Kyoto. So yeah, the time is, me and you look a little bit older, I think, Jim. A little bit is putting it kindly. Yeah. I've got quite a bit less hair on the top of my head than I did when we started.

5:15So yeah. And so, you know, one thing that I would like to mention that we would both like to mention is we're going to be doing a couple of things different maybe over the next year. One thing that we can announce right now is that as of 2026, we are going to be doing one episode a year that is specifically for our Patreon supporters. So it will not go out to any unpaid listeners. Sorry for that. But the idea of us keeping this ad free, and we will never do ads, but the people who do kick in and offer some financial support, it's probably important to everyone that we return a little bit of that.

6:05And so, you know, one episode a year is going to be for our Patreon supporters only. And the mechanics of how that are going to work, we're still working that out. But I think basically the May episode is what we're looking at right now. The May episode will be a Patreon only episode. Yeah, of course, we'll announce the topic for that particular episode as per usual on our Instagram page. And of course, on the Patreon page. Yeah. And just so you know, otherwise everything is just going to keep going the way it's going. We're going to be hunting down those topics that other people don't really seem to be talking much about, digging deep and giving our own personal spin on those.

6:49So, yes, look out for a few changes coming. But until then, we're just going to keep trucking along, going to keep our deep dives deep and our nerdy selves talking. And today, you know, as Andy mentioned at the top of the podcast, you know, the things that make every brewery unique are distinctly tied, I think, to the people at every brewery. And, you know, the topic that we're going to get into today is those people, the ones who are making all of the sake that we drink, particularly at this time, you know, what are their jobs like? what guides their jobs. And a thing that is fundamental to the way the industry has grown and developed, although it is, of course, like everything else, going through some changes, is the structure of that personnel system, the hierarchy inside every brewery.

7:56It's rooted in a very, very, very long traditional structure. And obviously, as the one who has been inside all these years. I'm looking to Andy for a lot of structure, but let's talk about that hierarchy, Andy. So we should say right from the offset, this hierarchy that we're going to talk about tonight, it is unfortunately, it's a dying system. This system has roots that go back to the beginning of the Edo period. So I'm sure by now a lot of our listeners will have heard of the term kanzukuri, which gets translated as winter brewing. Now, you'd be forgiven when you hear the term winter brewing for thinking the main point of that was to brew in winter because it's, as we now know, that it's more suitable for sake brewing.

8:53Lower temperatures, the air's cleaner, it's easier to control fermentation. etc etc but we have mentioned this before in the podcast really kanzukuri the winter brewing system was born from ordinance from the shogunate the brewers didn't have a choice of course they they knew that brewing in winter produced a slightly better quality brew that's why the sake was was divided into the seasons and it was typically the stuff that was made right in the height of winter the coldest part they would demand the highest prices but typically brewers were were brewing all year round like what i'm doing at the moment and the shogunate wanted to have more control over rice distribution and the way they did that was to start taking control of the sake industry that the sake industry was was a big tax generator for for the shogunate and of course there was a lot of famines in the Edo period and even just the first major famine taught them that they need to take control of rice distribution and one of the things that they did round about I think it's 1657 was the first one that they said okay guys you're no longer permitted to brew all year round we're just going to let you do it in this period from late autumn until spring.

10:23And that is a big problem if you're a brewer that up until that point has been spreading out your production for an entire year. And this is what the real meaning of Kanzukuri is. The Kanzukuri system is how they dealt with compacting a year of brewing or nearly a year of brewing into a six-month window. And it's from this that things get very efficient, very industrial, and very professional. And one of these is the toji seido, the toji system. This is really the foundation that has been used in the sake industry up until the modern day. But as I said, it is now waning, unfortunately, and more and more breweries are deciding to employ people as full-time employees rather than have them for six months of the year.

11:19And I know, Jim, you have probably one of the most famous examples of that down in Yamaguchi. Right. Yeah. I think one of the most public, most sort of well-known examples of a rejection, I think it's safe to call it a public rejection of the toji system, is, of course, Dasai. No longer Asahi Shuzo, it is just Dasai. very early on in the growth of Dasai as a brand the owner, his name was Sakurai Hiroshi pretty sure that was his given name decided that the Toji who had been making the sake at his brewery and who resisted many of the changes that he wanted to make had to go and he would just take care of things for himself.

12:21And so instead of, I think they very famously talk about, you know, instead of depending on the toji's experience and intuition and skill, they would depend on data. Now, I do have to say that, you know, Dasai has very, very publicly said that they do not have a toji, they have a production manager. But from what I understand, when Dasai opened its brewery in the United States, they paraded someone who called himself a toji. I'm assuming that was sort of a bit of an attempt to appeal to the drinkers in America who like things like Japanese culture and tradition. But, you know, yeah. Yeah, so that toji system.

13:06Now, even without going all the way to, you know, Dasei's extreme sort of repudiation of the system, there have been some very significant changes that I think every brewery really has dealt with. You know, Andy, you mentioned this fact that they were trying to compact a year's worth of brewing into one season. And some of the ways that they did that obviously were the tomatikomi system, right, where brewing staff would actually live at the brewery. They would basically be, someone would be on staff 24 hours a day, you know, making sure that the moto and the koji and everything was moving smoothly.

13:49people had very very few days off during that that six month system or six or several or however many months that that particular brewer's brewery season went and and all of that led to a very very strict rigid kind of system but nowadays tojikomi is is or tomarekomi is a very rare thing um you know most breweries i think hire people but but don't house them uh the idea of a toji having a team of brewers traveling with him uh for the season and like that's his team not the brewery's team is is relatively outdated you know i i think you know kenbishi is is one of the few places that probably still has a strong tomatikomi system the there is there is one local Yamaguchi brewery I know of that has kept up the toji system where a toji travels from Hiroshima for half of this season it's a very very limited production very very small brewery because the toji also works for another very very small brewery for the other half of the season I haven't confirmed that in the past couple of years.

15:03It is the kind of thing that could change at any time, just because everyone involved is exceptionally old. So, you know, they may just decide, I'm done, I'm done at any time. But yeah, the remnants of the system kind of struggle on here and there. But for the most part, I think the really hardcore old fashioned toji system is fundamentally not what it was probably even 20 years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to a lot of well-documented problems that breweries had. And of course, the extreme of that was there was a lot of breweries simply went out of business because their toji retired and they didn't have anyone to replace them.

15:47So that is really the biggest argument you hear for this system collapsing. You have these massive entities that are the toji associations, the kumiais. You think of the Nambu toji or you think of the Tamba toji, you know, these really big thousands and thousands of members that are sending out master brewers all across the country. And like you said, this was not just the TOJI, but an entire team would come with them. But of course, when these associations start to, the numbers start to dwindle, there's definitely been a shortage of training. and this is going to be a theme going through where they weren't teaching the next generation and there wasn't enough people coming up through the ranks and of course all of a sudden the associations are saying sorry we can't send anyone and the breweries are left saying well what do we do we've got a toji in his 80s now and they're they now want to retire so when they retired they literally they're not they're not going to do it themselves they wouldn't know what to do so the breweries just say okay that's it game over and that became the cattle rod for other brewers that saw this happening and said okay we need to change this and the the result was that they started to employ toji themselves permanently throughout the year and these these Toji would brew for half a season and then in the summer they would they would do other things for the brewery do maintenance and bottling and that type of thing and that's kind of where we've got to now with Kurabito as well but we're kind of in a limbo really now between that one extreme where you've got brewers only turning up for six months and now where they're there throughout the whole year but there is still remnants quite strong actually of the what is often described as a very feudalistic hierarchy below the toji so that's really what we want to get into tonight as well is to talk about that structure how it's how it's made up and and really who's who's doing what within that structure yeah i you know one of the things that that you know before we get onto the structure there is an interesting kind of circularity about something that i that you just reminded me of like this idea that there are still breweries that have permanent year-round employees but still only brew during the winter seasons you know what do they do the rest of the year more and more breweries those toji and those kurabito are farming rice in the summer and farming rice for the brewery i know that like that's that's one of the things that gokyo has really decided to do in part because of that summer off season you know they have all of these employees with you know not quite so much work to do why not send them out to the fields to help supply for the rest of the year.

19:05And so, you know, that's one element of, I think, the growing movement among sake breweries to do more sake rice growing. But yeah, as you said, you know, it's not just the toji. You know, one thing about that word toji, obviously, any listener to Sake Deep Dive is going to know that's the master brewer, the person who's at the top of the brewery. But the word toji also is used, I think, in a slightly more flexible sense. Back in the day, they used to talk about the person who was in charge of the rice polishing as the semi toji. There are, I think, some breweries who call the person who's in charge of the moto, the moto toji, right?

19:52So we know that the toji indicates someone who's at the top of whatever element they are doing. so if the toji is the top who's coming next in the traditional thing and i want to make sure that i get this right andy that is the the kashira right yeah um it's interesting you wanted you wanted to start at the top i was going to start from the bottom but let's just do it your way so yeah the kashira is i think one of the most interesting positions it's the position that almost gets zero attention. The kashira is the go-between between the brewers themselves, the kurabito and the toji. Now, that alone should tell you how important a position that is because what a lot of people don't understand with the toji, this is a very revered position.

20:53This was the one who takes complete charge Of the entire Structure of the brewery From buying the rice, from hiring and firing From doing the expenses The Kuramoto's job Was just to give them money The Kuramoto's job Was to Look after important clients And things, to play golf And that's through the week and what have you The Tony just takes care of everything else So I'll tell you now At Ken BCL There's 25 guys in my first season at Kenbiji, but you've got one guy at the top and we were expected to call him Oya, which is the Japanese way of saying father. So that should tell you how exalted his position was.

21:40And I've heard people saying that they weren't even allowed to speak directly to their toji. I think maybe Noguchi was one such toji that in the past people weren't even allowed to talk to him, which again I've never experienced that but it's kind of crazy so you have this position in between them the kashira now it's the second position in command but they have a lot of responsibility because the toji will typically in the old system they wouldn't be handing out orders directly to the kurabito they would say it once to the kashira and then it's the kashira's job to action their wishes for that day so it's a hugely important position when I think of my time at all the breweries I've been at I've had much more interaction far more interaction with the person in the number two position than I have with the tojis that have been in charge they are the ones that you go to when you need something they are the ones that you go to when you're not sure of something of course for someone like me who's been constantly changing breweries that is an everyday occurrence obviously there's been an element of language barrier and things so my relationship with my cashier has been extremely important to me through the years and that really would be the case for for everyone at a brewery so for me it's one of the most important and one of the most interesting positions in the brewery and it's such a crucial job to keep everything, to keep the whole machine well oiled Yeah, but I mean, I think that's the way it always works, right?

23:29It's the guy at the top the guy that gets the sort of the public eye I mean, like you said, that is part of I think the job at this point is to be the person that takes the attention on and and so you know it might actually be a bad thing if the kashira got started to get more attention it could interfere with the really really delicate nitty-gritty stuff because i mean honestly particularly in a really big sort of complicated brewing operation the the the the toji is going to be much more of a kind of a planning person a directing person whereas I think probably in lots of breweries, the kashira is the one that's actually doing the work in the brewery, right?

24:15Doing the more sort of direct, hands-on kinds of things when there's a person, when there's a job that's really, really important that needs done. It's probably much more common for the kashira to be the one doing the intervention. Like, you know, what was it at Kenbishi? How many toji did you have? So there was only one toji per brewery, but there's three breweries. Right. And you had the so toji, right? Yeah, well, actually, at Kenbishi, there is a so toji position, but they don't call him so toji. He's kacho and there's also the bucho. There is people above the toji or the tojis, plural, at Kenbishi that are there as the kind of support mechanism for the toji, if you will.

25:10These are people that have been there longer than them, that have done the job of toji before and then move upstairs, so to speak. and they do an overwatch of the entire system. So, yeah, it's another layer to this, I guess, above them. But, for example, Kiku Masamune, who, as you know, I'm very good friends with the So Toji there, and he is the overall Toji. So he is in charge of about four or five fully qualified Toji that manage the different breweries that they operate. That's quite a common thing When you start to get to these really big breweries We're talking the Nada brewers The breweries in Fushimi and the likes And I'd imagine probably a lot more breweries Outside of these regions That people don't actually realise how big they are As well Like Kamotsuru for example in Hiroshima Never really seem to get mentioned with these big guys Because it's in Hiroshima but they have about, I think they have four toji and a so toji above them.

26:21So that's quite a big brewery as well. They're not alone. There's lots of other breweries like that. These are going to be the ones that you see available nationally that you just know if they're in every shop, then they must be making an awful lot of sake. Yeah, right. And so, you know, I think when you have that much big picture responsibility, the smaller picture stuff is naturally going to fall on someone a little bit lower on the total pole, and that's going to be the kashira. And so I think in terms of sort of the straight line responsibility, that's probably the end of it, because below the kashira, things get much more complicated, right?

27:02We've got different areas, different people, different sorts of responsibility. Yeah and I think that is one reason before we finish on Kashira perhaps why they don't get that much attention as well because you have the toji which is the overall master brewer and then the positions below the Kashira they're all specific jobs whereas the Kashira is like I said it's more like an intermediate between the brewers themselves and the master brewer, it's when we get below the cashira, that's when we start to see these very specific positions. And this is still in the upper echelons of this hierarchical structure that we're talking about.

27:47There is a term in brewing which comes from sumo, which is the sanyaku. I think you will have heard of this. It seems to be a bit unclear, actually. it seems to be differ depending on what breweries speak to what source you look at but I was always under the impression that the sanyaku was the so sanyaku means the three top positions and that the sanyaku comes from that literally from sumo rankings but it would be the kashira the person in charge of making koji and the person in charge of making moto but you sometimes hear people say that the sanyaku is another position, which is what they call the kamaya.

28:32So this is another very important position. So we all know the saying, Ichikoji ni moto sansukuri. This is a ranking of three things that are deemed to be the most important. First one being koji, second one being moto, and the third one being moromi, or who's in charge of the main fermentation. But there is another saying, which is much less well known, which is Ichi-ni-mushi, ni-ni-mushi, san-ni-mushi. Now, have you ever heard that one before, Jim? Because I've never met anyone that's heard it outside of Brewing Circle. I have heard Ichi-ni. I've just heard Ichi-mushi, ni-mushi, san-mushi. Right, the steaming.

29:18Because it's all, everything that happens after the steaming is determined by the steaming, right? That's what they're trying to get at? Yes, basically. And that is the kamaya's job. So I actually, I need to check this source, but I think the person who claims to have said this first is Uhara Sensei. Oh, yeah? Yeah, famously of the Jumai episode. Yeah, I need to check that because that doesn't sound right. I mean, he wasn't a brewer. He was a consultant. So it just it sounds something more like something a toji would say. For example, Imada Miho, who I was fortunate enough to work for for three years.

30:05She firmly believes that the steaming is the most important part, because if you mess that up, you mess everything up. One of my other tojis as well, in fact, my first toji, they disagree on which point, but they really come back to the same gist, which is that if you mess up the rice steaming, You mess up everything, particularly koji and obviously the way that the rice actually ferments, which is a really big deal. So the kamaya is another position which doesn't get that much attention, but they really should. And I'll be honest, it's the one job in the brewery that I am delighted I've never been given in its entirety.

30:48I've never been given the full responsibility because they are responsible for measuring the rice. So getting it all weighed out. They're then responsible for making sure, not necessarily doing it themselves, but making sure that the rice is washed and soaked properly. Because that has a very big impact on their main job, which is steaming the rice. so anyone that knows anything about a sake brewery knows that first thing in the morning they steam rice and they mean first thing in the morning so the kamaya is the one who has to get up earlier than everyone else and start the rice the rice cooker or koshiki that takes about an hour and of course in the past they would have had to load that now these are big vessels that hold a lot of rice so you've got to get up pretty early to get it all filled and then start the the steamer and of course it's not actually an hour it's longer because the steamer has to to gather and permeate through the entire batch of rice and then they start the countdown they have ways now where they can shorten that and make sure that the these people don't have to get up at the crack of dawn before way before the crack of dawn even but traditionally that position they would be up at about three in the morning before all the other brewers to get things started it has to get done first thing because all the other jobs come from that so it can be seen that position is still the first one up in the morning that person gets a little bit of respite that they don't have to do the same night shift but that's because they're bed early up before everyone else and by the time we all turn up at about five o 'clock half past five, they've already put in an hour, an hour and a half's work so yeah, big position if you can imagine sleeping in the consequences of that are unfathomable you would have an entire team of brewers turning up and nothing to do so yeah, huge responsibility and I can see why some people say it's part of the Sanyaku but technically it is not it's the the positions that we're about to talk about next well i am curious about that like how does a person get to be given that job like is it just sort of someone's sense like oh this person seems like they'd be very reliable or or like do people want to be kamaya in your experience well we'll bear in mind that this structure that we're talking about i used the word feudalistic at the beginning.

33:30This is not a democracy. So the position that you're given in a brewery, all the breweries I've been in, it's just hype and you get on with it. Like, for example, at Kenbishi, every year we have the Kura Edi, it's called. This is the traditional day where everyone turns up. And on that night, we've not been in the brewery yet. We literally just get a room set up and things. And then we all go down and we have the shortest of meetings where they tell you what your position is and it's not a consultation they just call out your name and say this and you say hi and then once everyone's finished you'll get drunk and that's the the first day you'll have at Kenbishi it's it's one of the most exciting times actually because you really don't know what you're going to be doing until that evening and yet trust is the word if you've been given the kamaya position that is a huge position of trust because like i said everyone is depending on that first operation there's no one there to wake you up there's no one there to give you a reminder you have to be the one that gets up and gets that done so that when everyone else starts they've got something to do so the entire day depends on it so yeah that's how someone would get that position is by proving that they're capable and bear in mind it might not be officially part of the sanyaku but it is a very high rank within a brewery sounds like a heavy weight to bear all right and so yeah as you mentioned there are a couple of others that are very very important um and i think the one that probably jumps out as perhaps next in line is going to be, of course, koji.

35:21Koji is the heart and soul of sake brewing. And it's something that takes quite a lot of finesse, I think, to make sure that you do grow a very healthy batch of koji. So the person who's in charge of that. Now, one thing about that is this does seem to be a job that requires quite a lot of people directly. So the person who is in charge of koji, they're not, I suppose, in charge of planning because that would be the toji. The toji says, you know, how much of what kind of koji needs to be made and what day is. So who's in charge of the koji muro? And like, what do they do? Yeah, I'm going to say this of every position because the underlying thing is they're all important but the the koji position is considered really the absolute elite of all of the other jobs that aren't the kashira and the toji it's considered the most difficult it's considered the one that you get last philip harper says this constantly that this is really the final task before you're ready for that big lead and like we just said ichikoji nimoto sansukuri Koji is number one on that list So there's a few names they give it I've heard Muro-ya, Koji-ya But the official one is Daishi And this is the person who, like you said Not necessarily does it all themselves Because making Koji almost always requires more than one person I mean, of course, there's some breweries that do it on a scale But when you think of the extremes something like Kenbishi that is doing futa koji that out of that 25 brewers that I mentioned about half of them are employed in the koji room it needs an enormous amount of manpower to get that job done smaller breweries even a five six person team you're going to be at least two of them doing koji with probably another that's coming in to to help out it just requires a lot of effort is very difficult to do but ultimately there's someone in charge of that they will oversee temperature control element which is the the really crucial part that is constantly monitoring it so not necessarily requiring much labor but just making minute little adjustments to make sure that it does what it's supposed to do now when you think of something as complex as Koji you can probably get an idea of why this is considered final boss of the brewing hierarchy that they they don't let just anyone do this and it's it's something that of all the positions as well that you can maybe learn one position in maybe one two seasons the people that are doing the daishi position they tended to do it for for several years before these their their toji or their cashier will say okay you've got that we'll move you on to something else so it really speaks for itself koji is such an important thing it determines so much of the final product it's got to be done to the exacting standards of the toji so they need someone to action that accordingly Yeah, and I think just the mere fact that you're dealing with this living microorganism that has its own sort of needs that you need to sort of handle with care probably just makes it such a complex job, which I think probably is why it does get a bit more attention than the kamaya.

39:05Right, so the Daishi is in charge of Koji, the Kojimuro, the place where the Koji is made. And then I think you mentioned the Motoya is the third of the Sanyaku. Yeah, so this is a position that I've actually held, and I'm quite proud of that. I was the Motoya for two years at Fukucho. Occasionally, my Kashira would help out if I wasn't there, if there was something adjustment that needed made then obviously you call on your colleagues for that but it was just really me making the the moto whereas at Kenbushi you need about five six people so it's there's there's a whole structure a hierarchical structure within that the the moto yeah again very important position probably less so in terms of the complexities of it from making koji but if you're doing something like yamaha or kimoto you can imagine in the old days again it's it's that pressure that this is the first real stage where fermentation starts to happen so you've got to get it right it has a real knock-on effect for the rest of main fermentation so yeah again i've said this throughout another very very important position that you really need to put a lot of effort and concentration into.

40:31Now, there was a thing that they would have back in the day before they had the technology to help with this, which they would literally call them the awaban. Now, the awaban is someone whose job it would be to continually check the motel to make sure that the foaming yeasts that they were using wouldn't start to overflow. because one of the things about a moto is it's a very volatile fermentation it's much more susceptible to to quite drastic changes so that foam has the capacity to to really mess up someone's day so that would probably be one of the more difficult parts of being in charge of moto is that constant fear that your tank is overflowing with foam because the all-important yeast i mean they call it a yeast starter i still maintain there's much more to it than just making a colony of yeast it's it's a it's a flavor determiner now and you've got the acidity and everything that happens but so they're they're they're they're concentrated in the foam you mean a lot of the yeasts, yeah, they're concentrated in that foam.

41:43So if you let it get to, if you let it overflow, then literally you've just let a lot of the yeasts escape and die. So in the past, they would have this person that would have to continually get up during the night and check and basically stir the the moto to collapse the ever rising mound of foam so there was a lot of very precarious points to the to the motoya as well thankfully nowadays they have things like awakeshi it's called um or awakeshiki sorry like a propeller and it constantly keeps the foam down to a certain level so there there are there are ways ways around it but it must have been an incredibly stressful and tiring position back in the Edo period.

42:33Indeed. So then that rounds out the Sanyaku and I'll be honest as far as my knowledge goes other than that all I know is Kurabito, your general kind of staff. Are there other levels between the Sanyaku and the Kurabito that I don't know about? I mean it seems like there would be. In the past very much so. Again this comes back to Kanzukuri. So Kanzukuri was this incredibly efficient, almost militaristic system where everything had to be done on an extremely tight schedule. Everything had been compacted. They used to call them Hyakunichi Dekasegi, so 100 day seasonal workers. And that referring to the actual period that they're brewing for.

43:23There's obviously prep before and then packing up and things. And of course, there's not the same level of technology available. They're not using anywhere near the same amount of machinery. They're almost exclusively using Kimoto, which requires more manpower. They are exclusively using Futakoji. so there's going to be literally 10 times the amount of staff that there is in a normal brewery if you look at Kenbishi then you get an idea of sense because Kenbishi have way more staff than other brewers other breweries because they're doing things the traditional way like making Yamaha then they're doing futakoji and things so you need more staff and therefore you need to expand that structure so there was things like and the there was three ranking of general kurabito which is literally just upper middle and lower so um shita bito uh chu bito and then jo bito i think it was and that's from from lowest to to high and they would they would be organized and they would have to do all the other jobs and depending on where they sat in that ranking then they would be in charge of it so for example the the bottom of that the the lowest rank they would be helping out in the canteen they would be putting down the tea for the senior brewers or their miso shiro making sure it was hot when they sat down and these kind of things as as they go up that ranking then obviously they're going to start to do things that are more appropriate to their their new rank But yeah, for sure that happened in the past.

45:02Nowadays, in all honesty, I've never heard of that. In Japanese companies, they tend to manage their own hierarchy anyway. You have the Kohai Senpai system. I'd imagine in a brewery, it was just a little bit more rigid than that. I mean, for anyone that doesn't know, when you join a Japanese company, almost certainly you will have someone who calls you their kohai and you would have to refer to them as their senpai. So this is determined usually within just one year experience. If they enter the company before you, then they're your senpai. That means they're your senior. and there's certain etiquette that you typically should follow sometimes speaking to them more politely doing things for them that kind of thing so it exists even in the modern context and that applies to breweries but I've never really heard of that kind of way of of ranking brewers it just tends to be you have the the motoya the person in charge of koji and what have you, your Kashira, your Toji, and then everyone else.

46:14Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, one thing is probably to remember, a lot of this is going to depend very, very much on the size of a brewery. Lots of the very, very small breweries kind of, I mean, they'll have some hierarchy, but everybody kind of does everything. You know, I've seen breweries where even the Kuramoto is in there, shoveling rice and scrubbing out the Koshiki when the time comes. So, you know, it's definitely not going to be universal across the board. But yeah, very rigid social structure, even today in the sort of the professional full-time employee system that many, if not all, almost all breweries follow.