Guinomi, Choko and Sakazuki: which sake cup is which?
Japanese sake cups come in three broad types, and the main difference between them is size. There is no official standard: makers and shops in Japan use the names loosely, so the same cup might be called a choko by one potter and a guinomi by another. To make browsing easier, we sort every cup by its measured capacity:
- Sakazuki (盃) is the smallest at 30ml capacity or less, and the typical capacity is 25 to 30ml. Traditionally these are shallow, saucer shaped cups for ceremonies, rituals and celebrations, and as such are made for small, elegant sips. For ease of use, we also include other shapes in this category which have a capacity of less than 30ml.
- Ochoko (お猪口) (or Choko) are mid-sized cups with a capacity between 30 and 60ml, often around the 45 to 55ml mark. These are made for topping up by your drinking companion!
- Guinomi (ぐい呑み) are the largest cups, anything over 60ml qualifies, although most of our cups cluster around the 70ml mark. A larger cup for those with larger appetites!
A note on our capacities: Sake cups are usually filled very close to the top, so we measure our cups the same way. We fill nearly to the brim, as you would expect at a Japanese sake bar or izakaya.
Sometimes our cups are mistaken for shot glasses, but small as they are, sake cups are not shot glasses. Sake can be sipped or sometimes it can be knocked back with abandon, but sake cups are not quite the same as shot glasses. As you have read, volumes vary hugely whereas shot glasses are normally a defined volume, but the main difference is the artistic expression and creative effort that go into making sake cups.
How the three cups came about
The history neatly follows the sizing: the Sakazuki style is the smallest and the oldest. From the Heian to the Muromachi period, sake was poured from a chōshi into unglazed earthenware cups called kawarake.
A set of six antique kawarake offered for sale in Japan (https://tatami-antiques.com). You can see how rough and porous (and impractical) these would have been.
From the Muromachi period, lacquered cups appeared, and warrior households developed formal rules for sharing sake from a single cup. The three-tiered cups of the san-san-kudo wedding ritual descend from this tradition, and this ties in with their continued use in ritual celebrations.
A traditional set of laquer sakazuki cups in the traditional lucky red colour for a wedding. Source: https://www.bn-tsuruoka.com/blog/20567
Ochoko were originally small dishes for dressed side dishes (aemono). From the mid-Edo period these mukōzuke dishes were adapted to use as sake cups and as dipping cups for soba (Source: Kikumasamune sake library), the story goes that samurai attending Azuchi–Momoyama period tea gatherings found small cups fiddly and began drinking their sake from mukōzuke bowls instead. An Edo-period encyclopedia, Morisada Mankō, notes that porcelain cups had recently replaced lacquer ones, and that by then in Edo, Kyoto and Osaka a sake cup was simply called a choko (Source: Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum).
Guinomi only got their name only got their name after the Meiji period, when collectors began gathering sake cups from around Japan and cataloguing them . In the Taishō period, Kitaōji Rosanjin is said to have shaped the guinomi into the object it is today: a miniature tea bowl (Source: Shuwan). That is why so many guinomi borrow tea-bowl shapes, and why we describe them with tea-bowl shape names - and it also explains why they became so artistically elevated in comparison to their humble origin.
The renaissance man and aesthete Kitaōji Rosanjin. A fascinating man well worth reading about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosanjin
Where the names come from
Sakazuki is a combination of saka (the old form of "sake") plus tsuki (坏), an old word for a shallow earthenware bowl. So it literally means "sake bowl" and is a very old word. It appears in the Kojiki of 712 and in the Man'yōshū, where it is spelt out in sounds as 佐加豆岐. Nowadays, itt can be written 盃, 杯, 坏 or 酒坏: one explanation is that 杯 was used for wooden cups and 盃 for ceramic ones, though in practice the two are interchangeable. Even now "exchanging sakazuki" means sealing a promise, from the wedding san-san-kudo to the cup shared between a boss and his followers. (Source: weblio)
Choko is written 猪口, literally "boar's mouth", but the characters are ateji, chosen for their sound rather than their meaning, and the word itself is of uncertain origin. One theory is that it comes from a Korean, Hokkien or old Chinese reading of 鍾, a vessel for alcohol. It is recorded as "choku" from at least the 17th century and as "choko" from the 19th century (Wiktionary (猪口)). The popular explanation that choko comes from "chokotto", meaning "just a little", is often cited, but there is no evidence for this at all!
Guinomi is usually explained as coming from "gui to nomu", to drink in one hearty gulp, although the Asahi Shuzo (Kubota) magazine notes that there are several theories, including "guigui nomu", drinking steadily, cup after cup (this is the version the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association gives japansake.or) and "guhi-nomi", an Edo era expression meaning to down a drink in one go. In short, even though it is a relatively recent creation, no-one quite knows where it came from.