CROSSING BORDERS

On the 90th anniversary of Nikka Whisky, Taller explores the enduring legacy of Taketsuru Masataka, its founder and the pioneering godfather of Japanese whisky, and the cross-cultural love story that shaped Nikka Whisky's indomitable spirit

- Gavin Yeung

They would have looked right at home at any of the 148 whisky distilleries currently operating in Scotland—six onion-shaped copper pot stills sat side by side in a warehouse, heated directly by blazing coal-fired furnaces underneath—were it not for one small detail. At the top of each still’s “swan neck”—where the alcohol vapours from the boiling mash within rise to condense into new-make whisky—were strung shimenawa: sacred straw ropes festooned with shide paper streamers more commonly found adorning Shinto shrines across Japan to ward off evil spirits.

Here, at Yoichi Distillery in Hokkaido—regarded as the birthplace of Nikka Whisky— these beatified stills represented something else: the continuation of the vision of Taketsuru Masataka, the godfather of Japanese whisky, in bringing something inherently Scottish and transforming it into something thoroughly Japanese.

There are pioneers, and then there’s Taketsuru. Born in Hiroshima in 1894 to a well-respected family of sake makers, he showed a natural affinity for chemistry early on, which would later morph into a fully fledged fascination with Western liquor over sake—his parents were none too pleased.

Hired straight out of school to work at one of Japan’s earliest makers of Western-style spirits, the ambitious Taketsuru was personally tasked by the company president to sojourn directly to Scotland to learn all the intricacies of making malt whisky. And so, in 1918, he waved goodbye to the Port of Kobe from the deck of the Tenyomaru steamer, bound for an experience that would kickstart the creation of homegrown Japanese whisky.