A friend who runs a bottle shop recently put a record player by his front window. Storefront windows are valuable spaces for any retailer. Especially in areas where they depend on foot traffic, storefront displays can attract customers. Think about what you see in the storefronts of most alcohol bottle shops. It’s usually new arrivals, a sampling of the best brands available inside, or signs.
I noticed that people passing by often glanced down at the record player, paused, and peered through the window (“Oh, it’s a bottle shop.”–you could almost read the expression on their faces). When it was spinning, sometimes they’d come in to listen. They might comment, “I used to have this record.” or “I saw this group waaaaay back.” People liked the record player. Once, when it was turned off, somebody came in to complain that record players are for playing music.
What is it about record players? Why have sales of vinyl soared in the last decade or so, even as we’ve gone increasingly digital? Is it because we’ve gone increasingly digital that people have been buying vinyl? What does this have to do with sake?
I read up on the reasons why vinyl made a comeback. Some of them made sense, and some were quite interesting. Vinyl shops, for example, are a community space where people flip through records, feel a part of a shared experience, and talk to others about their passion.
Our office in Yokohama is right beside Japan’s oldest jazz cafe, called Chigusa. Mamoru Yoshida opened it in 1933. By the early 1940s, he had over 6000 records but the store and his collection were destroyed during WWII. There was no ‘cloud’ to magically restore his collection–one great advantage of digital, admittedly. Yoshida rebuilt his collection in the decades following. When he died in 1994, his place was an institution and he had become a legend. Others carried the torch thereafter, relocating the cafe beside our office when developers razed its previous location. It continues to attract jazz lovers, both local and from far flung reaches of Japan, who sit, sip and listen.
In reading about the appeal of vinyl, I was curious about authenticity. Some wrote that the analog creation of music led to richer sound and hence richer experience. Others talked about the hiss and pop of old records, an experience perhaps tied to nostalgia and memory. Choosing what to listen to is often more deliberate. It’s not like you can scroll through dozens of albums with a flick of the thumb on your screen, press a selection, and jump away if you aren’t feeling it. You’ve already pulled the record case from the shelf, the record from the sleeve, placed it on the turntable and set the needle. You’re probably going to listen to the whole thing so you’d better choose well!
Authenticity in its simplest meaning is what’s “real”, but it seems to be tied to a sense of preserving something that you don’t want lost. It’s possible romanticism plays a role in this, too, but I feel like we support things we view as authentic because we recognize value in them that is threatened by the vicissitudes of time and technological advances (or grotesque capitalism).
How much is our appreciation of sake tied to the perception of its authenticity and the richness of experience in drinking it in certain settings? When we drink, are we spinning liquid records on our palate players? Maybe our vinyl shop is the local bottle retailer, izakaya or bar. The deliberate act of choosing a bottle is like choosing a record. Is Sake Today, then, like a volume of music history where we delve into genre, influence, reinterpretation, and tradition?
Have you set the needle? Let’s get started.
