Abstract
This paper focuses on doburoku, a traditional handmade alcoholic rice brew that has long been prepared in households in the Senboku region of Akita Prefecture, Japan. Through interviews with elderly women, it aims to clarify what meanings the brewing, storage, and sharing of doburoku within the community have held for local residents’ lives, and in what specific ways these practices have contributed to the making of everyday life in the region. The findings can be summarized in the following three points: (1) The brewing of doburoku was a planned practice aligned with the rhythms of daily life, with its preparation adjusted according to the changing seasons and annual events. (2) To share handmade doburoku on various occasions throughout the year, local residents developed a range of storage methods that made effective use of their domestic spaces and the surrounding natural environment. (3) Sharing doburoku within the community—particularly during agricultural work, annual events, and life-cycle rituals—served as a cultural expression of collective commensal ity that reinforced social cohesion and sustained communal relationships. These practices reflect a the locally rooted living culture that has been nurtured over time. Rediscovering doburoku as a living cultural resource offers valuable insights into the reconstruction of regional identity and provides implications for community-based regional development grounded in the agency of everyday people.
Keywords
Doburoku; Living Cultural Resource; Community development; Akita Prefecture
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.825
Citation
Qianyi, Y., Aoki, H.,and Ueda, A.(2025) Rediscovering handmade doburoku from the perspectives of brewing, storage, and sharing within the community: Through interviews with elderly women in the Senboku region of Akita Prefecture, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.825
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 11 - Culture and Craft Design for Regenerative Practices
Rediscovering handmade doburoku from the perspectives of brewing, storage, and sharing within the community: Through interviews with elderly women in the Senboku region of Akita Prefecture
This paper focuses on doburoku, a traditional handmade alcoholic rice brew that has long been prepared in households in the Senboku region of Akita Prefecture, Japan. Through interviews with elderly women, it aims to clarify what meanings the brewing, storage, and sharing of doburoku within the community have held for local residents’ lives, and in what specific ways these practices have contributed to the making of everyday life in the region. The findings can be summarized in the following three points: (1) The brewing of doburoku was a planned practice aligned with the rhythms of daily life, with its preparation adjusted according to the changing seasons and annual events. (2) To share handmade doburoku on various occasions throughout the year, local residents developed a range of storage methods that made effective use of their domestic spaces and the surrounding natural environment. (3) Sharing doburoku within the community—particularly during agricultural work, annual events, and life-cycle rituals—served as a cultural expression of collective commensal ity that reinforced social cohesion and sustained communal relationships. These practices reflect a the locally rooted living culture that has been nurtured over time. Rediscovering doburoku as a living cultural resource offers valuable insights into the reconstruction of regional identity and provides implications for community-based regional development grounded in the agency of everyday people.