Rita Taketsuru was born Jessie Roberta Cowan on the 14th December 1896 in the town of Kirkintilloch. Rita the oldest of 4 siblings came from a middle class family living a relatively comfortable life in a town teeming with industrial enterprise in the time Rita lived there with jobs available in textile manufacturing, transportation, logistics and supporting industries for all the workers of these factories. Ironically, between 1923 and 1967 Kirky as it known to locals was alcohol free and part of the temperance movement.

Rita would meet her future husband Masataka-San while he was living in Scotland attending Glasgow University’s Chemistry department as a student. His employer Settsy Shuzo had decided to enter the whisky market and needed someone to learn the production methods for what was seen as the best producers of Whisky in the world and indeed Japan was Scotch Whisky’s largest export market at the time. Masataka was a prime choice not least because his family owned Settsy Shuzo which still makes Sake today.

Alongside his studies at university there were also apprenticeships at three distilleries (Longmorn, Bo’ness and Hazelburn) to combine the scientific and theoretical principals to spirit production with practical application in the field. In many ways this was decades ahead of its time with this type of hybrid learning in engineering and science much more commonplace today. Jessie wasn’t a student at the university herself but her sister Ella was as a medical student. Rita and Masataka’s lives would intersect when Ella invited Masataka back to their home to teach her brother Campbell some Judo while also being a lodger in the family home. Jessie’s mother took in a lodger after losing her husband and only person in the family earning a wage to a heart attack. Sadly, by this stage Rita had also lost a love interest to the meat grinder that was the First World War.

By 1920 the couple were married and Masataka had completed his education in Scotland including the third and last apprenticeship at Hazelburn which he did as a married man living with Rita in Campbeltown and the couple returned to Japan. Eager to get started as the only individual trained in producing Scotch style Whisky in Japan the couple were disappointed to find the business direction had changed and his new skills would not be required.

All was not lost though as by 1923 Suntory had recruited him to support the building and production of Yamasaki distillery in a 10 year contract. During this period Rita was working as an English teacher and learning Japanese herself. While her husband might have been socially clumsy, as in all the best marriages, their natural talents complemented each other and Rita was a natural communicator and social butterfly. The initial investors into the Taketsuru’s next project would be found and enticed by Rita from her clients at those English lessons.

Yoichi would be the location for their first distillery in the northern area of Japan. Work on the distillery began in 1934 and Rita joined her husband in the new town in 1935. She would find when she arrived she had to learn a new dialect of Japanese but worked to integrate into the local community.

With the outbreak of another war in Europe in 1939 it wasn’t long before the Empire of Japan saw this as an opportunity to grow its own influence in the world and perhaps more importantly resolve its natural resources shortage and entered the war on the Axis side. Clearly as a British national in Japan in the early 1940’s this would be a difficult and frightening time for her. As the war continued she was increasingly seen as a spy and harassed by the security services. Locals would not want to be associated with her for fear of being seen as a spy against the country. However, the fact she was not interned but allowed to stay in our own home and working shows the level of power and respect the Takesuru couple and wider family had at the time. Unlike in Britain, for example, whisky production was a reserved occupation and without Scottish imports the Yoichi distillery was turning a profit from 1940.

In either the late 1950’s or early 1960’s Rita opened a children’s nursery called “Rita’s nursery” which still stands today. Rita would die in 1961 but not before seeing her youngest sister for the first time since she left Scotland when Lucy visited Japan for the first time.

Today, the story of what is now Nikka whisky and the Takesuru’s is little known in Scotland but holds mass appeal in Japan as the couple who brought Whisky to Japan. Indeed, there was a story in the Japan Times in 2001 of a fan club for the First Lady of Japanese whisky and quite right to.