The unassuming British botanist worshipped as a Goddess in Japan

Every year, in Uto, a small town in southern Japan, a festival is held in honour of a minor religious figure, known locally as the Mother of the Sea.

During the ceremony, Shinto priests gather around a cliffside monument to pay homage to a bespectacled, middle-aged woman credited with saving Japanese agriculture.

But the name carved upon the shrine- Madame Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker- is not an ancient goddess, a martyr, a princess or a folkloric hero, but rather an unassuming botanist from Manchester who had never set foot in Japan. This is her story.

Born to an unassuming family in Leigh in 1901, Kathleen Drew’s life was defined by hard work and relentless dedication. A model pupil at school, she was awarded a prestigious scholarship to study botany at the University of Manchester and graduated with a first class honours degree in 1922 and an MSc the following year.

Drew soon began working as a lecturer in botany at the university, which she continued to do for the rest of her life, and such was her dedication to her work that she even remained in the field after marrying fellow academic Henry Wright-Baker- considered a highly controversial move at the time.

Throughout the course of her career, Drew-Baker developed an interest in marine and coastal botany, particularly different types of seaweed. It was this interest which would lead her on a trip to the coast of Wales, and would inadvertently change the face of Japan forever.

Nori, a type of leafy, red seaweed, was both the object of Drew-Baker’s studies and, unknown to her, a crucial ingredient in preparing sushi (it’s the wrap used to keep the rolls together). Known in Japan as ‘lucky’ or ‘gambler’s’ grass due to its unpredictable nature.

Following the end of World War Two, nori production had slumped into serious decline as the crop was too unreliable to cultivate for a country in dire need of rebuilding itself after the war. Typhoons and pollution had taken a serious toll on the coastal waters, severely hampering production, and cultivation of the crop was next-to-impossible due to nori’s lack of seeds or seedlings.

All seemed lost, and it looked like Japan’s sushi industry could be wiped out completely- until Drew-Baker made a startling discovery.

During a trip to the Welsh coast in 1949, the botanist discovered that the sludgy, microscopic algae grown in seashells during summer was the same species that later blossoms into seaweed in the winter, rather than two different breeds as was previously assumed.

If, she thought, the life cycle of Japanese nori was the same as the Welsh laver she had been studying, does this mean that seaweed could be produced and harvested all year round?

Drew-Baker published a paper on the topic, which was later discovered by a Japanese academic who put her theory to the test. It proved to be a wild success- so much so that when the researcher relayed his findings to local nori farmers, production not only bounced back, but thrived. 

The industry soon began to grow and grow, and Japanese sushi was catapulted from a curious local delicacy to a worldwide export synonymous with Japan. All thanks to a quiet researcher from Manchester, who died a few years later without ever knowing the true impact of her research.

But although Drew-Baker never visited Japan, the people there were determined to keep her legacy alive.

In 1963, the seaside community of Uto erected a monument in her honour, and bestowed upon her the title of ‘Mother of the Sea’. Every year, on April 14, her work is celebrated at the annual ‘Drew Festival’, which is attended by hundreds of people.

During the ceremony, Shinto priests adorn the monument with flower garlands and conduct a sacred ritual known as a norito prayer, in which she is honoured as a patron saint to which the entire community is indebted. 

Years after their mother’s passing, Drew-Baker’s two children, John and Francis later travelled to Japan in order to experience first-hand the reverence in which she was held. Upon arrival, it is said they were mobbed by TV cameras, photographers and treated like celebrities.

But when asked about what their mother would’ve thought about the sushi she helped to birth, her son John admitted: ‘I don’t think she’d like sushi, she wasn’t very adventurous when it came to food!’