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| Hokusai: The Strong Oi Pouring Sake |
The
Strong Oi Pouring Sake
is a portrait Hokusai made of his daughter, Oi. She was also an
artist and her art name was Sakae; the title of the portrait is
likely to be a pun based on that.
Sake is a Japanese alcoholic beverage, sometimes called rice wine. While it is made of rice, it is not correct to call it wine. It is not, as wine, made by fermentation of sugar naturally present in grapes (or other fruit), but by a brewing-like process, where starch is first converted to sugar, which is then fermented to produce the alcohol. Thus, technically, sake is not wine.