Stirring Sake Mash In A Brewery

Inside a timber-framed sake brewery hung with a paper lantern, two workers in indigo robes stir large wooden vats of pale, bubbling rice mash with long wooden paddles. Rows of labeled ceramic jars and barrels line the shelves behind them, marked with brush-written characters naming different sake houses. Further back, other workers tend more fermentation tubs and stack wooden barrels bound with straw rope. Woven bundles and clay jugs sit stacked near the floor, and a ladder leans against the shelving toward the loft. Numbered tags mark the two nearest vats as separate batches in progress, each one bubbling at its own pace under the lantern light. The two marked barrels in the foreground already keep this batch sorted from the one fermenting right beside it.