The University is to feature in a documentary tracing the student days of the so-called “father of Japanese whisky”, Masataka Taketsuru, who studied organic chemistry in 1919 at Gilmorehill.

His Scottish wife, Rita Cowan, whom he met while lodging at her mother’s guesthouse in Kirkintilloch, is the focus of a morning TV drama called “Massan”, broadcast on NHK, which has captured the public imagination in Japan.

Last week, a film crew and presenter from “Sekai Fushigi Hakken”, a history/travel programme broadcast by the TBS station, spent a day on campus filming where the young, aspiring distiller was taught by Thomas Stewart Patterson, who held the Gardiner Chair of Chemistry at that time.

Japanese TV crew at work in the Cloisters

First published: 25 March 2015

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