ANTIQUES Sake bottle 2 609

This refers to ceramic tokkuri bottles that were commonly used from the Edo period through the Meiji and Taisho eras. Liquor stores and soy sauce shops would lend these bottles to customers for refills; once empty, the customer would return the tokkuri to the shop to have it filled with the desired amount of sake or soy sauce, creating an early circular system of reusable container sales.