The story of Japanese whisky begins with one Masataka Taketsuru. Taketsuru arrived in Scotland towards the end of 1918, sent there by his Japanese employer with the express purpose of learning how authentic Scotch whisky is made. Taketsuru was fortunate in his encounters on foreign soil. It was while a student in Glasgow that he met and married Rita, the eldest daughter of a family with whom he had found lodgings. The couple then moved to Campbeltown, where Taketsuru found a mentor in Peter Margach Innes, manager of the Hazelburn Distillery. Under Innes’ guidance, Taketsuru was able to observe and record every step of the industrial processes involved in whisky manufacture. After his return to Japan, Taketsuru established his own distillery, producing the world-renowned Nikka whisky.
The success of Taketsuru’s mission rested on a concatenation of factors by means of which the three figures mentioned above were brought into each other’s orbit. Not least of these was the backdrop of the Great War. This seminar examines the way in which wartime experiences shaped and directed the course of their lives. It also touches briefly upon the shadow cast by the hostilities once the war had ended.
