Tonoto with millet malt

A grain drink made for gathering

Tonoto appears in Yoshishige Hayashi's account of Ainu food as a home-made grain drink prepared for festivals and housewarmings. He also records the name ashikoro. His short description connects a domestic sequence with public occasions: grain is cooked into gruel, cooled, mixed with what the English text calls malt made from millet, and left before use.

Hayashi's investigation took place in Hokkaido between 1963 and 1967 and drew on twenty elders. Published in 1970, the paper preserves recollections and descriptions across food, meals and utensils. It is a window into remembered practice, rather than a date for tonoto's invention. Hayashi himself recognized that his coverage was incomplete.

The grain choices in his drink passage are water oats, millet and rice, with water oats associated with earlier practice. He does not say that all three went into one batch. The week-long holding period and the shorter interval when drink was wanted sooner belong to this particular account. They convey how preparation fitted an occasion, while leaving the exact batch and its fermentation conditions undescribed.

Cultivated grain among fish, game and gathered plants

Tonoto belongs within an Ainu food economy that included cultivation as well as hunting, fishing and gathering. Hokkaido's institutional account of traditional livelihood describes grains used in daily gruel, steamed for festivals, made into dumplings and brewed into liquor. The same broad class of ingredient could therefore enter an ordinary meal or a ceremonial preparation.

That account also emphasizes regional differences. Coastal communities had different access to seafood from people living inland, and gathering supplied seasonal plants. A grain drink should not erase that wider range of foods, or suggest that every household's meals followed one pattern. Its place becomes clearer beside soups, stored fish, cultivated crops and gathered ingredients.

Grain form matters to the distinction between preparations. A steamed grain dish, a gruel and a drink begin with related materials but undergo different handling. The water and cooking used to make gruel establish a wet preparation that can subsequently be cooled and combined with another ingredient. Describing those choices gives tonoto a place within cooking knowledge, rather than treating it as an isolated ceremonial object with no relationship to everyday food work.

What cooking changes before fermentation

Cooking is already changing the grain before fermentation begins. Research on rice cooking describes starch gelatinization, the transformation of starch as grain is heated with water. Microscopic work has shown that this change can progress inward from the grain surface and from cracks formed during water immersion. An apparently simple grain thus contains regions changing at different rates.

Other rice-cooking experiments found that heating arrangements could produce different textures even when measured gelatinization was similar. Water uptake and the route taken through heating matter alongside whether the pot eventually boils. That helps explain why a food description's choice of gruel carries information about physical preparation.

These studies concern rice cooked under experimental conditions, not a laboratory reconstruction of Hayashi's tonoto. They provide vocabulary for the cooking stage, rather than a new water ratio or heating schedule. Gelatinization also should not be confused with alcoholic fermentation: one is a heat-and-water change in starch, while the later biological stage involves living organisms. Hayashi's account does not identify those organisms. Keeping the stages distinct allows the reader to understand what cooking accomplishes without assigning an unmeasured microbial community to the drink.

A Shiraoi preparation gives the stages visible form

A later illustrated reconstruction from Shiraoi shows how much work can sit behind a short instruction to prepare grain drink. The Ainu cultural foundation's cooking manual describes an Iomante preparation using hie and koji, identified there as kamtachi. This is a separate documented method. Hayashi identifies millet as his malt substrate but does not describe its preparation or organisms.

The grain is cooked as porridge, spread out to cool, mixed thoroughly with koji and transferred to a barrel. Mats, a blanket and cord form part of the vessel's covering. Inspection and stirring occur before the drink is strained on the day before the ceremony. A sieve supported above another vessel receives the mash, and the worker presses and rubs it through by hand.

Straining divides the preparation into liquid tonoto and the retained grain material, shirari. It is a physical separation, not another fermentation. The manual gives both portions a ceremonial role. Its images and sequence make cooling, mixing, covering and separating intelligible as different kinds of work. This method identifies its koji; Hayashi identifies malt made from millet without describing how it was prepared or which organisms it contained.

Preparing drink within the ceremony's timetable

The accompanying ritual manual places the drink within a larger undertaking. It draws on Iomante events documented by the Ainu Museum, particularly a recorded reconstruction, and explicitly recognizes differences among regions and officiants. Food preparation and the making and placement of ritual objects are parts of an organized gathering.

In its described sequence, grain residue and drink are offered in prayer before the cup passes through the assembled people. Elders receive drink, followed by women who make offerings and drink themselves. These actions give the prepared liquid a social route as well as a path from cooking vessel to cup. The occasion determines who handles it, when it is presented and how it is shared.

This account also shows why a brewing timetable cannot be understood only as elapsed fermentation time. The drink is prepared for an event with other tasks and participants waiting on it. Straining has a place in that sequence. These reconstructions were intended to transmit this ceremonial knowledge to younger people.

Making an offering includes the grain left behind

The Hokkaido agricultural administration's account of Ainu traditional foods describes tonoto in connection with kamuy-nomi, prayers to kamuy, and icharupa, ancestral observances. Its discussion recognizes regional variation and was checked with a representative of the Sapporo Ainu Association. The drink enters relationships with spiritual beings and ancestors as well as with the people who consume it.

Women have a prominent brewing role in this account. Preparation includes prayers to Apefuchi Kamuy, the fire deity, asking that the drink develop well. That combination of work and prayer cannot be represented adequately by a list of ingredients alone. The maker's responsibilities include a cultural understanding of the preparation, rather than only the manipulation of grain and water.

The strained solids, shirari, also receive attention as offerings. Calling them merely discarded waste would miss their use. A separation that looks like an ordinary kitchen operation produces two materials with places in the occasion. Straining brings an act of gratitude together with the practical work of making a drink that can be served.

From storage vessel to cup

A serving display interpreted by the Japan Tourism Agency distinguishes three tools: an etonupu pitcher, a kasup ladle and a tuki drinking cup. Tonoto moves from its storage container into the pitcher, through the ladle and into the smaller cup used by a participant.

That sequence separates storing a batch from portioning it for people. A large brewing or storage vessel is not the same object as the cup at a gathering, and a ladle does different work from the sieve that removes grain solids. Names for the tools preserve these distinctions. These names belong to the display's particular interpretation of serving practice.

A cloudy drink in museum practice

The Ainu Museum’s 2016 account of preparing a contemporary Kotan-nomi describes tonoto as a cloudy drink, distinct in that setting from clear Japanese sake. Rice, hie and awa appear among its materials. The explanation connects the growing use of rice with its availability and cost, rather than presenting one grain as an eternal requirement.

The museum's preparations include cooking and cooling grain, combining it with koji, and straining before the gathering. Its discussion also distinguishes a ceremony for which drink is brewed from occasions when purchased clear sake may be used. The name of an offering therefore does not by itself reveal what was made in a household or how its grain was processed.

The museum explains a particular contemporary practice. Its cloudy drink is a useful comparison, while Hayashi supplies no flavour description. Differences between home preparation, a museum ceremony and purchased sake also show how an occasion can continue while its materials and arrangements change.

Learning to recognize a good batch

In the Saru River region, a community food project joined cooking with the transmission of knowledge. Masami Iwasaki-Goodman's account describes Ainu participants interviewing elders, preparing food for ceremonies and teaching others. When members took turns straining tonoto, they also learned the accompanying prayer. Technique and cultural knowledge were taught through the same task.

The chapter gives a separate preparation using rice and egg millet with malted rice. Its combination belongs to that Saru account and should remain distinct from the alternatives in Hayashi's description. The comparison shows that continuity does not require every preparation to have identical ingredients.

The community's comments about taste are particularly revealing. Participants recognized differences between batches, wanting to take good tonoto home after a ceremony and declining less successful drink. Taste was something people learned to discuss and share through experience. The account does not reduce that judgement to a single sweetness or acidity target. It connects appreciation of the drink with renewed familiarity: cooking, serving and talking about it helped a community recover knowledge that a written formula alone could not transmit.

Tonoto beside the returning salmon

Tonoto also appears in the cultural foundation's manual for Pekkamuinomi, a river ceremony welcoming salmon. The documented sequence moves between an indoor gathering and the river mouth. Drink, grain residue and serving vessels are prepared alongside the objects used in prayer. This places tonoto in a different ceremonial setting from the bear-spirit-sending preparation.

Inside, the manual describes people opening the storage vessel, mixing the drink and transferring it with a ladle to a pouring vessel. The tools then participate in an ordered exchange among people making offerings. Stirring at this stage belongs to serving the prepared drink; it should not be mistaken for a new fermentation instruction.

The wider ceremony connects the river, the home and ancestors. Grain drink is one material carried through those relationships, alongside the food and objects particular to the occasion. The manual's detailed arrangements document a specific community event rather than a rule for all Ainu ceremonies. Its value for understanding tonoto is that it shows the drink in use: handled, portioned and offered in a shared sequence, rather than photographed alone in a bowl.

A modern bottled interpretation

Tanaka Shuzo's Kamuy Tonoto offers a clearly identified commercial comparison. The producer describes fermenting Hokkaido rice koji and yeast with hie, then adding hie amazake to give the drink more body. Its account of development includes consulting written materials, making repeated trials and checking the result in Shiraoi.

The producer describes a slightly yellow appearance, moderate sweetness and acidity, and a thick mouthfeel. Those sensory details belong to this named modern product. They provide something concrete to imagine when considering one contemporary interpretation, without becoming tasting notes for the drink recalled in Hayashi's interviews.

The amazake addition is especially useful to notice. In this formulation, the maker explicitly connects a later ingredient with body in the finished drink. Rice koji and yeast are named here. Hayashi instead describes malt made from millet, without identifying its preparation or organisms.