Fermented food products such as soy sauce, miso, sake, shochu, vinegar and mirin are indispensable for Japanese cuisine.The old-fashioned way of fermenting these products by hand has become rare. Nowadays their fermentation has mostly been mechanized, so as to produce them with consistent high quality.Formerly, machine-brewed products were said to taste different from those brewed by hand. But with the immense progress in our technology, we have succeeded in raising machine-brewed products’ quality so that their flavor holds its own with hand-brewed products’ flavor – or leaves it behind.By digitizing the parts that used to rely on the experience and intuition of skilled professionals, and incorporating advanced technology, we have achieved mechanized processes that sophisticatedly reproduce the hand-brewing ones.What’s more, improvements have been worked into the data used for the digitization, so as to eliminate inheritor problems for customers and let them use the digitized processes as a permanent asset.
In 2013, UNESCO designated “Washoku” (traditional Japanese cuisine) as an intangible cultural asset.Thereafter, washoku’s popularity rose and rose overseas – as witnessed by the huge success of the Japan Pavilion at Expo Milan. Yet in Japan itself the reverse phenomenon is happening and people are increasingly turning away from washoku – especially the young.We need to get washoku’s overseas popularity entrenched for the long term – it should not be allowed to end like a mere fad.And we need to get people in Japan to re-acknowledge the fineness of washoku, so that it flourishes once again as a principal player on the dinner table.In both cases, enhancement of quality and orientation toward “the real thing” will be the key.
In the future as before, Fujiwara Techno-Art will be contributing to the further development of Japanese food culture by heightening quality and steadfastly supporting the wishes of customers who pursue authentic flavors.