The oldest word for shochu is a complaint about a priest.

In 1546 the Portuguese Jorge Alvares reported to Francis Xavier on a rice spirit drunk at Yamakawa, in what is now Ibusuki City, Kagoshima.

He called it orraqua, a word Maya Aley of Kanpai.us traces to the Arabic araq. Ryder spells his name Alvarez and gives no year. The National Tax Agency and NRIB give 1546.

The word 焼酎 is written in ink on the back of a wooden piece from Koriyama Hachiman Shrine, in Isa City, Kagoshima. Carpenters repairing the main hall wrote it. NRIB places the piece in the rafters. Isa City says it covered a pillar decoration called a kibana at the back of the main hall, and that it has since been taken down and kept. NRIB calls it the oldest record of the word.

The makers association renders the complaint in English this way.

“the head priest was so cheap that he never offered us shochu”

NRIB has the same grievance: the head priest is stingy and never serves a cup of shochu.

NRIB says the board was “discovered” in 1559, wording that does not say whether that is the year of writing or the year of discovery. Kagoshima Prefecture’s 2015 designation notice and Isa City both date the writing to the 1559 repair of the main hall and the discovery to the rebuild of 1954 and 1955. The National Tax Agency's survey prints the inscription's own date line, the eleventh day of the eighth month of 1559. We use the prefecture’s dates.

In 2015 the prefecture designated the piece a prefectural tangible cultural property. Its 2013 ordinance on honkaku shochu already cites it, with a 16th-century record related to Xavier, for a shochu history said to go back 500 years.

The makers association lists a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary of 1603 that describes “xochu” as “wine that leaves fire like orraqua”.

The Portuguese word from 1546 and the Japanese word from 1559 sit in one entry, 57 years after the first and 44 after the second.

The Sake School of America translates the pair 焼酎 as “burned spirit”, said to indicate its high potency, and does not split the characters. Brad Smith of The Japanese Bar splits it into burnt (焼) and sake (酎). The two disagree on the noun.

Satsuma, the protected name for most of Kagoshima, is a sweet potato shochu. In 1559 the crop had not arrived. The prefecture lists four accounts of its arrival: 1611, about 1613, 1698, when Tanegashima asked the Ryukyu king for it, and 1705, when Maeda Riemon brought it to Yamakawa. The earliest is 52 years after the board.

The 1546 report says rice. The makers association says the base of shochu in the 16th century was rice, and the prefecture's designation notice says the inscription confirms that the 1546 rice spirit was called shochu. NRIB does not say what the 1559 spirit was made from.

The Kuma makers association says rice shochu has been made in Hitoyoshi-Kuma since the Muromachi era, and its own timeline lists both the 1546 report and the 1559 board. The Sake School of America gives the most accepted version as rice shochu starting in the 16th century in the Kuma region of Kumamoto.

NRIB's oldest document puts a rice spirit at Yamakawa in 1546. NRIB does not say where rice shochu began. The Sake School of America gives Kuma. The Kuma makers association's own timeline says shochu making began in Kuma and Satsuma in the first half of the 16th century.

NRIB says shochu making is considered to have reached the Ryukyu Kingdom from Siam in the 15th century. It says the route on to Kyushu has been theorised as Okinawa, Korea, China or even Europe, with no definitive evidence for any.

The National Tax Agency gives two theories for Ryukyu itself: from Fujian directly, or from China by way of Siam. Its chronology quotes Chen Kan in 1534, who wrote that the spirit seemed to come from Siam while the method was Chinese. The Japan Tourism Agency says that for awamori a link to the Thai spirit Lao Khao was once popular, and that other research points to Fujian.

The Sake School of America calls a Korean record of 1477 the earliest written mention of distilled spirit in Ryukyu. Ryder reports the same record.

The 1546 report names rice. Rice shochu is still made, and Kuma, in Kumamoto, is its protected name. Order one. Whether it tastes like anything Alvares saw, no source says.

The carpenters wrote that they were not served. Only their side is on record.