6 - Alcohol Globalism

Summary

Chapter Six establishes the base from which to extend our examination of soju into the future, using the comparative cases of Japan and what is now Mexico. Japan, which has been interacting with its neighbors on the Korean Peninsula and in China for centuries, long ago developed a drinking culture, one that resembles those of Korea and China. While sake, a fermented, strained wine, predominates in Japan, the spirit known as shōchū (written with the Chinese characters shaozhou 燒酎, “roasted liquor”), Japan’s counterpart to soju, also developed as a unique form of distilled liquor. Theories abound about how such spirits developed in Japan. Here, we examine the possibility that transfers of distilled liquors and distillation methods occurred between China and Korea and Japan. Next, we extend our comparison to a more surprising place, Mexico. Anthropological field research on underground still production of alcohol in Mexico points out the resemblance of local stills to Mongolian types, suggesting the possibility that Afro-Eurasian distillation methods influenced alcohol development there both before and after the arrival of Europeans. Even if we cannot deny the possibility that distillation developed independently there, a comparative examination of the rise of distilled liquors in different places of the world remains a worthy endeavor.