It wasn't love at first sight. "This is a conservative industry, and I was going to entrust my business to a foreigner? It was not an easy decision," Konoshita says.
But Harper won him over. "I never dreamed that there could be someone from overseas who could stick around long enough to become competent at making sake," he says.
"But Philip did that. He's become a master."
Ask Harper why Japan has fallen out of love with its traditional drink and he'll tell you that the sake industry has itself to blame.
"They took it for granted that people would always drink sake," he says. "They didn't respond when tastes changed. People overseas have done a better job promoting sake than here at home."
Over the last decade, sake sales in the U.S. have risen 12% each year. Overall, Japan exported 40% more sake in 2007 than five years before. Britain, Canada, South Korea and even mainland China are now importing the drink.
But in Japan, sales remain flat -- especially for lower-end sake.
Japanese drink only half the amount of sake they did in the 1970s, and only 1,450 breweries remain from 30,000 a century ago. The average master brewer is age 64, and without enough young talent to take the reins, many fear the craft will die off.
"Sake ads here don't have any young people," Harper says. "They have older kimono-clad women offering to pour you sake. My hope is that as sake takes off overseas, it will have a boomerang effect.
"Then maybe it will become popular in Japan again."
Each six-month brewing season, Harper labors from dawn until dusk, seven days a week, returning several times each night to check on his precious batches of brew.
At one point, Harper reaches into a steaming barrel to roll a wad of rice between his fingers, checking for texture, before sampling his product. He smiles.
So exactly what taste is he looking for?
"The right one," he says, hurrying off to complete another task.
After each process, he and his staff wash down the brewery floor, carefully wiping machines -- never complaining about the hard work and certainly not the chill in the factory, where he can see the puffs of his breath.
In fact, Harper welcomes the cold. He knows cooler temperatures produce the best sake. Winter weather, he says, helps control fermentation and discourage taste-spoiling bacteria.
"When the weather turns and people start complaining about the cold," he says, "that's when the sake brewer starts smiling."
This year, he won awards in Japan and the U.S., but Harper wants to push the process further for newer and more exotic tastes.
After all these years in the factory, he still loves drinking sake.
"You get home and you're still cold," he says. "Drinking a few flasks of hot sake is like getting into a hot bath when you're achy and tired. It's heaven on Earth."
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john.glionna@latimes.com
