As we took off from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport T WAS A BRILLIANT, clear morning. It ’s not difficult to feel alienated— cocooned with only a view of a tv display as well as the clouds — but for that short instant, peering from the airplane’s window, I actually felt a sense of place.

It’s a motif I was mulling over since I arrived in Japan. Even though the state includes a modest wine business—Grace Wines being a famous estate to keep an eye out for— an internationally famous sake sector and, it was its unfledged whisky business that appeared to take the national consciousness after I seen. “Massan,” a new miniseries about among the creators of whisky that was Japanese, was airing. It tells the story of Masataka Taketsuru, who went to Scotland to study organic chemistry and there fell in love with the art of distilling as well as Japanese whisky Malaysia.