pre-industrial distillation technology in Japan

[wombat1138]

ranbiki: steam-distillation apparatus about 50cm tall (the link has a photo which is monochrome but enlargeable). Its introduction is generally credited to the "Dutch learning" category of Western technology, but seems to be more directly related to similar pre-existing processes in mainland Asia; nevertheless, its name does seem to be an adaptation of the European word "alembic".

Technically, it was an extractor topped by an advanced version of a "Moor's head”, in which cooling water surrounds the annular rim. Made of ceramics, and sometimes of copper, it consisted of three chambers. The lowest chamber contained a liquid or broth that was heated with a charcoal fire. The liquid evaporated and rose to the top chamber, where it condensed, moved through a side pipe, and then dripped into a receiving vessel. If the middle chamber was filled with herbs, the steam extracted herbal oils. Until the nineteenth century, such ranbiki could be found in pharmacies, in the houses of physicians, and in the homes of well-to-do families.

Its usage was largely geared toward obtaining essential oils from medicinal plants, for topical application rather than for ingestion; this particular reference[1] doesn't mention their usage for perfume qua perfume, but of course the same technique could've been applied to flower petals regardless of intended usage.

[1: Wolfgang Michel, Elke Werger-Klein: Drop by Drop - The Introduction of Western Distillation Techniques into Seventeenth-Century Japan. Journal of the Japan Society of Medical History, Vol. 50 (2004), No.4, pp. 463-492]

Michel seems to've written several more papers on the same subject, so those should be good for additional followup.

Addenda: another name for distillation gadgetry is kabuto-kama ("helmet-pot"?), but I'm not certain whether that's merely a functional synonym for ranbiki or specifies a different type of still; also, an article from the NYT Sunday magazine here on the role of perfume in modern Japan.

Comments

[scriva.livejournal.com]

Fasacinating. I think the distillation used for perfume is very closely linked to distillation used for pharmacy. Partly, they even use the same plants, imo.

[scriva.livejournal.com]

And I meant "fascinating", of course.

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

So the Yukishiros would have had a still like this to make haku baikou? Cool.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

*absent-minded finger-tapping* I'm still not sure what the original referent for hakubaikou would've been.

(And yeah, I know there's a common assumption that the scent was associated with prostitutes, but I've never found any basis for that beyond "I saw it somewhere on the web" RK fan discussions. On the one paw, it seems like a reasonable conclusion from some of Hiko's comments, but on another, if the scent was so commonly worn by prostitutes, then a.) why would it have done any good to ask the whorehouses whether they'd processed any girls who were wearing it, and b.) why couldn't they find any? (Though to the extent that Iizuka was involved in that part of the search, he could've been lying through his teeth.))

This particular kou may be 香, whose visual etymology I poked at when looking at two different kanji (http://wombat1138.livejournal.com/62800.html) commonly used to write out the name "Kaoru"; to the extent that a physical medium is specified, I'm inclined to think of liquid rather than smoke, if only because the original kanji implies sweet millet syrup rather than burning incense.

Hakubai is "white plum"... hmmm... *pokes at web*... ZOMG.

梅: "Japanese plum"; depending on the context, can be pronounced bai or ume, but that's not the ZOMG part.

梅毒: baidoku, "syphilis" (the second kanji, doku, means "poison"; despite Christopher Lee's comment about the origins of Count Dooku's name, neither vowel of this word is elongated).

There do seem to be a bunch of matches for the kanji triad 白梅香, including with crossrefs to RK, so I guess that means I've found the right ones.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Kept forgetting to add-- it's possible that rather than being based on essential oils that'd been distilled from literal white plum blossoms, Tomoe's perfume might've been based on the traditional "white plum" solid incense which was actually made of a bunch of other stuff that combined to evoke the fragrance of plum blossoms anyway; there are probably ways to extract the aromatics out of the incense by steeping it in alcohol (sake etc.). Certainly a pure essential oil would've been too concentrated for her to directly apply to her skin, not just because the scent would be overwhelming but also because it would probably cause irritation and inflammation.

So yet again, this is a topic that eternally seems to go round and round without really settling anything :b