Sake Drinker

Sake Drinker presents a figure in the act of consuming Japan's most culturally embedded beverage — the rice wine that had been central to Shinto ritual, social bonding, and the pleasures of daily life since ancient times. The sake drinker as a genre subject belonged to a long tradition in Japanese art of celebrating the pleasures of drink with a warmth that was never entirely moralistic — the drinker's relaxed, expansive state was typically rendered with affection rather than censure. Mori's version would have captured the particular combination of physical pleasure and social ease that sake was understood to induce.