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Complex Numbers #1082161 added January 9, 2025 at 10:09am
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Samurai Wine
Yes, it's a BBC article about a Japanese immigrant to California.
And no, he didn't change it with his katana.
An hour's drive north of San Francisco, rows of gnarled and twisted vines terrace up the slopes of gently rolling hills in Sonoma County, California – which, alongside its neighbour, Napa, has been one of the world's premier wine-growing regions for more than a century.
Much to the annoyance of the French.
But California might never have earned such viticultural acclaim if it weren't for the little-known story of a Japanese immigrant named Kanaye Nagasawa.
So, you're telling me that immigrants can be a benefit?
Born into a samurai family and smuggled out of Shogunate Japan, only to become a founding member of a utopian cult and eventually known as the "Wine King of California", Nagasawa led a life that was stranger than fiction.
Okay, you had me at "utopian cult."
Nagasawa's extraordinary story goes back to 1864, when 19 young samurai from the Satsuma peninsula of Kagoshima were smuggled out of fiercely isolationist Edo-era Japan on a secret mission to study science and technology in the West.
While the BBC seems to have these archaic principles called "journalistic standards," I do not, and therefore I can write that this sounds like the coolest thing ever and why isn't it a movie already?
The youngest of the group, 13-year-old Hikosuke Isonaga went to Scotland, changing his name to Kanaye Nagasawa to protect his family, since at the time it was illegal to travel outside Japan. There, he came into the orbit of a charismatic religious leader named Thomas Lake Harris, who was recruiting followers to his version of ecstatic transcendentalism called The Brotherhood of the New Life.
Ah, yes, the utopian cult in question.
Naming the estate Fountaingrove after a year-round spring on the property, Harris set out to grow grapes, putting Nagasawa in charge of the operation. The winery soon prospered, but the "Eden of the West", as the commune described itself, became ever more wild, making headlines in San Francisco for its bacchanalian parties that eventually led to Harris' ignominious departure.
Hey, Hollywood: I know you're kind of busy right now what with the wildfires and all, but when shit stops being on fire, make this fucking movie.
All this came to an end during one of the darkest chapters of California's history, when Fountaingrove was seized by the government as part of the state's discriminatory Alien Land Laws, which were instituted in 1913, expanded in the 1920s and forbade Asian nationals from owning land or businesses.
Ah, there it is: the America I know. That plus the internment camps a couple decades later, which also feature in the article.
And that's why Hollywood won't touch it: there's no happy ending. It would have to be a Japanese movie. They're not focused on happy endings; what's important is that the protagonists maintain their honor. |
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