Packages and Containers of Shoyu as Viewed from Food Culture

Have you ever stopped to look at and think about the packages you use every day? Not much attention is usually given to them. It would be normal for you to take notice of their contents but give little heed to the packages themselves. And yet, without packages, various foods would never reach you; and without good packaging performance, the quality of the food they contain could not be preserved. Without packages, our present-day diet would not exist. Foods and packages are as closely linked as that.

The package is a natural product of the wisdom garnered during mankind's long history, and packaging technology has grown with the progress of science: earthenware has continued to develop since mankind's earliest period; barrels and pails were used from medieval times until after the Second World War; canning techniques were developed for wartime food supplies; plastics technology has made it possible to reduce the weight of packages; the technique of packaging food in retort pouches came in answer to the needs of astronauts; and so on and so forth. Packaging has developed and advanced with the times to meet the requirements of each new age. And today, our affluent diet would be unthinkable if these "packaging revolutions" had not taken place.

In our own time, packaging must satisfy many requirements: improvements in the functions of food hygiene and food preservation, contributions to distribution, and from the point of view of protection of the environment, the production of packages which apply low loads to the ecosystem and are easy to recycle.

At the Institute, we keep our eyes on all these points and intend to take a fresh look at our food culture from the viewpoint of "packages". In the present exhibition, the meaning of packages and containers will be first examined, a brief overview of the history of Shoyu (Brewed Soy Sauce) containers will be presented, and the barrels typical of shoyu containers from the Edo period onward will be discussed in detail.

Packaging is a technique to provide proper materials and containers together with the condition that such materials and containers provide for protecting the value and the state of products when they are transported, stored, transacted, or used. (JIS Z0108)

A package comprises not only the container, which is "something to hold the product in", but also the labels, caps, and the cardboard used.

It is not clearly known when the container called the "barrel" came into existence. The form we immediately conjure up in our mind is the kind called "Yuidaru (also called a Shibaridaru)". This is assumed to have originated from the Yuioke (pail) brought from China to Japan primarily through Japan-Sung (China) trade around the 13th century. This can be surmised from picture scrolls of those days in which the Yuidaru began to appear.

Thereafter, these barrels became popular around Kyoto in the latter part of the Age of Civil Wars (the 16th century) and spread throughout Japan in the Edo period. The Yuidaru, which is superior to other barrels in its outstanding transportability and ease of fabrication, became very popular and the kind most commonly used.

Many varieties of barrel became available for barrel. Among them the kind exclusively used as a shoyu container was the Yuidaru made of Japanese cedar. This Yuidaru was primarily used for the transportation of sake, but eventually it came to be used for shoyu transportation. In the first part of the Edo period, when shoyu began to be produced on a commercial basis, conventional heavy and fragile earthenware pots and jars were inconvenient for distributing shoyu to the various parts of Japan. Thus, the Yuidaru, which was lightweight and less susceptible to breakage, was chosen as the container convenient for transportation. The shoyu barrel with a volume of 1-To (see note) containing 8-Sho(see note) of shoyu was designated as a standard among shoyu wholesalers in the Edo period, but in and after the Meiji era, one Yuidaru was filled with 9-Sho of shoyu.
(note):1-To=18L;1-Sho=1.8L

"Dainihon Bussan Zue: Shimosa-no-kuni Shoyu Seizo no Zu (Picture of Soy Sauce Production in Shimosa Province)",
by Hiroshige Ando,3rd.
(Owned by Kikkoman Corp.)

In the Edo period, Japan had trade relations with the Netherlands, and the only port that was open for trade with the Netherlands (and so foreign countries) was Nagasaki. Japanese shoyu was exported to the Netherlands through Nagasaki, and the Yuidaru was also used for export containers, as were together with Comprador bottles. The photo below shows a trade document from the Netherlands East India Company and in the center portion of the document, we see "12 Ballen Soya" (12 barrels of shoyu), is written.

"The Trading Record of Netherlands East India Company"
(Owned by Central State Archive Repository, Hague, the Netherlands)

Newly fabricated barrels were of course used in those days, but used barrels were considered proper for the "best- quality shoyu". These were cleaned with water and hot water for reuse. In Edo, a merchants union called the "Akidaru Don-ya" (Empty Barrel Wholesalers Union) existed, and a system to collect empty barrels and sell them to brewers had been established. In addition, the recycling of sake barrels of "Kudari Zake" (sake shipped from the Kansai region to Edo) was practiced, and known as "Tsubushi Daru". 4-To (about 72L) sake barrels were disassembled to remake into 9-Sho (about 16L) shoyu barrels. Furthermore, there was the "Kashi Daru", a system to lease barrels, and selling shoyu by measure was also practiced for the people who bought only small volumes of shoyu. On such occasions, earthenware containers were used.

In and after the Meiji era, a large number of Yuidaru were used as shoyu barrels. In addition to the reuse of sake barrels which had been practiced before, barrels fabricated using high-quality Akita cedar were popularly used from around the end of the Meiji era. With the development of rail traffic and transportation represented by the opening of the Ōu Main Line in 1910 (43rd year of the Meiji era), suppliers of barrel material changed. In the Taisho era, shoyu saw the golden age of barrel packaging. Thereafter, demand for shoyu increased, and a still greater number of barrels were required. At Kikkoman, barrel-fabricating plants were established and mass-production began. However, as demand for shoyu increased, demand for containers also increased, and as a result, the use of cans and bottles also grew. Though the demand for barrels continued to increase, eventually, barrels were destined to lose their share of the market for containers for shoyu.

In wartime, due to the shortage of materials, Showadaru made from pine wood, and Toadaru made from Sugihiki-zai (sawn Japanese cedar timber), were among those developed to make up for the shortage of containers. After World War II , when the shortage of materials eased the use of cedar barrels was revived and continued, but because of changes in social needs and various technological innovations, the period of high economic growth saw the role of barrels severely diminished.

The barrel used for shoyu and sake was generally made of cedar (Cryptomeria japonica). This is because the material is easily obtained, cedar being a tall evergreen tree suited to the Japanese climate and distributed throughout Japan, and is comparatively soft and easy to work with. Furthermore, natural chemical substances such as terpene, etc (See note), in cedar create an environment that makes it difficult for microorganisms to proliferate in barrels made from this wood.

(Note)
Terpene,etc.: a group of organic compounds containing two or more isoprene units isolated from essential oils and natural resins.

The barrel consists of a number of staves, a bottom and a lid, the headings, composed of one solid piece or several pieces of wood, respectively, and hoops made of metal, bamboo, or cords. Tightening the hoops prevents the contents from leaking as well as the bottom or the lid from coming off.

The fabrication of a shoyu Yuidaru follows several processes.

Because shoyu has high permeability, even an undetectable small crack in the packing will cause shoyu to leak. In the case of shoyu barrels, to prevent leakage, methods were developed to use only 100-to 300-year-old Akita cedar with tightly spaced annual rings, showing limited summer growth. Timber dried for about 3 months is used.

Enormous labor and time is required for fabricating barrels, but in the golden age of barrel production, by division of labor, the craftsperson of Noda are said to have produced a daily average of sixteen barrels per craftsperson.

We believe that through this exhibition after visiting this you will see more clearly than ever that packaging is indispensable to our way of life.
Here, the significance of packages and containers in our food culture is demonstrated with special attention given to shoyu containers of former times, in particular the "Taru"(barrel), which was widely used after the industrialization of shoyu production. We have shown that the Yuidaru was a container that made a great contribution to the transportation and distribution of shoyu for some 300 years in and after the medieval period. Cedar possesses various properties, but the reason why cedar barrels have been in such popular use is possibly the action of "Phytoncide", a chemical substance in cedar that enables it to inhibit the proliferation of microorganisms.
You will have seen that the Yuidaru was an outstanding container that took root in a society that recycled.
We are sure you will agree that there are many things that we in these modern times could learn from those societies that practiced recycling.
The theme of the next exhibition will be pottery, which were used for shoyu packaging during and after the Meiji era.