I am in a pub in Kirkintilloch enjoying a dram of good Scotch whisky.
This whisky is also pretty good but it s from Japan.
So how are this town and this bottle connected and who was the astonishing woman that
makes the connection? If you re interested int the
people places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe
button at the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
Imagine a time before this place existed. It s 1918. War in Europe
has raged for four years. Fortunately, it s the war to end all wars, so
Archduke Ferdinand s sacrifice would be worth it. His wasn t the only sacrifice.
The war took your fianc to a posting in the Middle East where he died in Damascus .
You re a 23-year-old middle class Scottish woman and not the best of health
The books they ll write about you will describe you as not strong
not robust Capable of light domestic chores , but little else.
You ve completed a course in English and French at a local college.
You re the eldest of four. Your youngest brother and sister
are both still at school, and another sister is studying medicine at Glasgow University.
She s following in your father s footsteps. He was a doctor.
In fact the big posh house that you live in doubled as his, pre NHS, doctor s surgery...
But on midsummer s day he died of a heart attack at the age of 48.
In some ways his death is the most significant event in this story.
You see it, left your mother with a large house but no doctor s income.
Mum looks to put the house up for sale, but in the meantime had to make ends meet.
Large living space, but low income meant she was ideally placed to take in a lodger...
and as 1918 came to a close your younger sister arranged for a lonely guest to
visit for Christmas. He s a foreigner.
A Japanese chap, but speaks very good English. She met at University or something and,
being a foreigner without family, was probably at a loose end and lost for
company over Christmas and New Year. Masataka was his name.
There was nothing inappropriate going on. You re not that kind of family.
Anyway, let me show you something.
If dad had still been around mum probably wouldn t have taken in a lodger,
but Masataka must have hit it off with the family.
Apparently he was a fitness type and started teaching jujitsu to Campbell, the young brother.
One way or another by 4th March he must have been a lodger at the house,
because this is the address he gave when he registered for
summer classes at Glasgow University. Since then it s been council buildings,
knocked down and replaced by a nightclub and now that s shut so let s go to to the park .
Masataka was in the process of translating a whisky bible called #
The Manufacture of Whisky and Plain Spirit into Japanese.
He spoke good English but was glad of Rita s help for the more complex language.
Rita that s the person I ve asked you to imagine yourself as.
I m sure that you can also imagine that this attractive, educated,
exotic man, just a year older than you, who played a small drum as you played piano and
your younger sister sang would be quite a catch your fianc having died in the war and all.
There must have been reciprocal feelings because when he came back from a trip to
mainland Europe, he returned with a gift of perfume for Rita
and she gave him a book of Robert Bruns poems. I mean in 1919 that s practically foreplay.
At their 1919 Christmas party a year after they first met he proposed.
He suggested that he could stay in Scotland and find work ,
but she knew that his dream was to go back to Japan and make Scotch whisky
and Rita said she wanted to help. Two weeks later, on 8th January 1920
Masataka Taketsuru chemichal student and Jessie R Cowan were married at
Calton registry office by declaration, signed by the Sherrif Substitute of Lanarkshire.
They couldn t be married in Church, because well..
The witnesses were Rita s 16-year-old sister the singer in the musical trio,
and you friend Jessie Henderson... who s dad was now running the medical practise.
There was a celebration meal in the Station Hotel in Glasgow,
where the wedding party was joined by Masataka s chemistry Professor.
It was good that he was supportive because Rita s mother wasn t.
As soon as she heard she insisted that the marriage should be annulled.
but they were both over 21, so officially didn t need parental approval.
Which was a good job , because when the letter breaking the
news reached Masataka s parents in Japan it nearly broke them.
They went straight to his sponsoring employer, Kihei Abe, who high tailed
it to Scotland as fast as he could. but by the time he got here, it was too late.
The marriage had been consummated. The couple would be heading for Japan
My trip to Japan is going to be far quicker than theirs was.
Of course I ll still have a bit of a wait for my flight,
so why don t I tell you a wee bit about Masataka and his background.
Masataka Taketsuru came from a well to do family of Saki brewers near Hiroshima.
His mum was of nobility. Let s not beat about the bush, he was a bit posh.
At boarding school he d been a conscientious student, head of one of the dormitories
and a friend of a future Japanese Prime Minister.
You get the picture. But in his autobiography Masataka says
arriving in Glasgow early in the evening, although it was smoky, I felt I was at home,
and that Glasgow was my town.
The Weegies are like that. They re friendly types.
After school he d studied chemistry at what s now Osaka University,
then transferred to a new course in brewing. In 1917 he was approached by the owner
of a spirit making company, so instead of graduating went
off to be a chemist with Settsu Shuzo. It was this employer who had funded the
trip to Scotland for Masataka to learn how to make whisky.
The same employer who d jumped on a boat as soon as they d heard about this hair brained
idea of marrying a westerner... for love...?
It just wasn t the done thing. But he had married a westerner.
He d also made a more in-depth study of Chemistry at what s now Strathclyde University.
He d travelled to Speyside to spend a week working in a distillery just outside Elgin.
He d set out to translate J.A.Nettleton s book The Manufacture of Spirit as conducted in the
Distilleries of the United Kingdom. He d worked for a short time at a
distillery in Boness and, once married, he and Rita had travelled to Campbeltown in
Kintyre, so that the Japanese student could continue his apprenticeship and deepen his
knowledge of the art of whisky making. For five months Masataka worked at the
Hazelburn Distillery each day... and each night he wrote up notes
of what he had learned... and Rita looked after domestic activities.
Rita knew his passion was to make real scotch whisky in Japan.
When Rita arrived in Japan at the end of 1920 it was to a welcome
home dinner with nineteen excited guests, speaking a language she didn t understand.
Eighteen of them were men. This was a
culture shock. I m not suggesting for
a minute that women enjoyed high status in Britain in the 1920s.
This was worse. Rita had to deal
with learning a new language, lettering system, culture and reduction in status of her gender
AND suspicion of her origins in a country that had only
opened to the west 50 years before. A country that was about to see the abrogation
of the Anglo Japanese Alliance and the slide towards the hostilities of the second world war.
As I tell the rest of the story..., try to imagine yourself in that position.
Rita learned Japanese cooking, evidently becoming very good at it.
She spoke Japanese, apparently with an Osaka accent.
She overcame cultural challenges to become a model Japanese wife.
She got work as a piano teacher and an English tutor.
This second role meant that she would later make a huge impact
in a place where women weren t supposed to... The establishment of authentic Scotch whisky
distilling in Japan... but not yet. Not long after arriving back in Japan
changing economic conditions meant that the Settsu Shuzo company
who had sent Masataka to Scotland to learn how to make genuine whisky
decided that they could no longer justify building a whisky production still.
Everything was collapsing... As if Rita needed another challenge.
A few months later Sinjiro Torii, who d launched a drinks company twenty-four years earlier
asked Masataka to set up Japan s first whisky distillery with him.
Where should they locate it? Masataka thought back to the remote northern
areas of Scotland, with clear fresh water, and suggested the island of
Hokkaido far to the north. Shinjiro Tori looked at the transport costs...
and set up the distillery in Kyoto. Rita continued with her teaching.
She had a failed pregnancy and wasn t able to have children after that.
They adopted.... A baby Japanese child doesn t questio
why mummy is white, she s just mummy, but that child would grow...
and with the approach of war... so would doubt and discontentment.
Lack of their own children wasn t the only disappointment.
Masataka was asked to manage a brewery that Shinjiro Torii had bought 100 miles away.
Now there are conflicting opinions. Masataka s insistence on following
Scottish methodology, the demands of managing two plants 100 miles apart,
Shinjiro Torii s own son taking an interest in distilling whisky.
Whatever the reasons discontent followed...
but remember I said that Rita s English teaching links would prove useful.
At the age of 40, having established the first ever whisky distillery in Japan,
Masataka decided to go into competition with his powerful employer.
He would build a new distillery, where he d wanted to build the first...,
in northern climes where fresh water flowed freely...
just like he remembered in Scotland. Where would he get the money for
this new venture... from three investors,
two of whose families had been taught English by a certain Scottish woman in Japan.
This is where Rita and Masataka truly set about producing
genuine Scotch whisky in Japan . The Yoishi Distillery of Nikka.
I m not going to bore you with the fermentation, distillation and maturation period.
The First whisky from this distillery was put on the market in 1940.
A year later... the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.
The war was actually good for the Nikka whisky business.
The taste of Japanese officers for whisky and crash of western imports
meant that business boomed, but life wasn t smooth.
This is what they call Ritta s House. Rita Taketsuru nee Cowan to be precise.
For a Scottish woman holding a Japanese passport,
married to a Japanese man, with adopted Japanese children...
life certainly wasn t smooth.
Don t forget that Japan had been at war with China off and on for some time....
It was largely the reason for their involvement in this one.
Even basic foodstuffs like rice had been rationed....
But with the outbreak of hostilities .... Westerners were going HOME, and Japanese
Leaving the house meant being followed by police on suspicion of spying,
or being spat on by locals, who were now technically her countrymen...,
in the streets around here... as her family in Scotland longed
that she might return... and her daughter
who would find it more difficult having a white mother.
These must have been difficult years to live in this house... for a woman who had worked so
hard to assimilate into Japanese life. Rita suffered increasing ill health.
After the war the business prospered... with inevitable ups and downs,
but visas to travel outside the country were limited, so calls to visit home went unheeded.
They moved to a suburban house outside the distillery, with rooms in European as well
as Japanese style. They adopted a son...
to inherit. Grandchildren came... but Rita s health continued to decline
in the ten years after the warIn 1956 Rita spent time in and out of hospital.
Tuberculosis and cancer were taking their toll.
Early in 1957 she was discharged, but by October
she was in hospital further south in Tokyo. 1957 was a memorable year for Rita.
An aunt died and left a legacy to her and her siblings.
Her younger sister Lucy used her share to come and visit in Japan.
Rita used her S to set up a nursery school here in Yoichi.
It was also a special year because it was the first in four that Rita spent
Christmas at home rather than in hospital. But her time was always spent down in the
warmer climes and health services near Tokyo, and she desperately missed the grandchildren.
On 17th January 1961, when Nikka whisky and her husband were at their height
Rita died. She regretted that she had
never been able to return to visit Scotland. Her husband Masataka regretted, as he felt,
the shortening of her life because of the stresses she d faced following him to Japan.
Fourteen years later he followed her to that other world,
and here they look out to the northern sea. Maybe they look towards Speyside whisky
distilleries. Maybe Campbeltown
where they prepared for their work here. Maybe to Glasgow that Masataka said was his town.
The funny thing is that Masataka is probably little known in Glasgow,
but Rita is well known here with a TV series about their lives doing great box office.
Either way, I raise a glass of whisky to them both.
It s Japanese... or is it? If you d like to hear more
intriguing stories about Scots in Japan then there s a video coming up on screen now.
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