Kokuteeru - Paperback

by Yonekichi Maeda (Author), Kagumi Otani (Translator), Eiji Arakawa (Introduction by)

Finding and translating Kokuteeru (1924) was a year long journey that helps to answer the question "who wrote the first Japanese cocktail book?" Whilst this honour goes to Tokuzo Akiyama's book Cocktails: How To Mix Drinks, Yonekichi Maeda's Kokuteeru is considered to be the more systematic and practical text which was published a month later. Western style spirits and bartending made their way into Japanese culture as early as 1872. And by the early 1900s Japanese bartenders ran their own Western style establishments. Kokuteeru gives us a fascinating glimpse as to how 1920s Japanese bartenders began to define themselves and their profession.