Japanese sake brewers see signs of long-awaited pickup in demand amid changes in eating habits

March 26, 2015

Japanese sake brewers see signs of long-awaited pickup in demand amid changes in eating habits

A special sake rice wine shop set up on the compound of Shinozaki Co.’s brewery was filled with customers trying to find their favorites on one day in mid-March. The occasion was an annual “kurabiraki” event held to introduce the year’s new brew. On the wall of the shop were an old photo and a copy of a winner’s certificate the company obtained in an international wine exhibition, but customers were busy looking for good buys, paying little attention to the items. 

The photo, taken in the 1930s, shows sake brewers standing in front of a brick chimney. "We don't have an original print of the picture. That's all we have,"said Hiroyuki Shinozaki, the owner and president of the company. "We were using coal as a fuel at that time, but we now use an oil burning boiler, and we have an advanced temperature control system." 
Shinozaki Co., located in Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, won the Trophy award from the International Wine Challenge of London in 2007. The competition organizer had launched the sake Japanese rice wine division in the year. 
This year's kurabiraki tasting event attracted as many as 1,600 visitors, including young women. This was another sign that Japanese are beginning to take a fresh look at "seishu" sake rice wine. Seishu has been regarded as Japan's "national liquor," but its domestic consumption has been on a steady decline since the 1970s, reflecting changes in people's eating habits, notably the so-called disalcoholization and consumers' preference for imported drinks. 
Domestic sake consumption for 2010 stood at 590 million liters, down about 30 percent compared with the 1980s. The number of operating sake brewers across the country declined to about 1,500, almost half the 1955 level. 
In the slumping years, consumption picked up from time to time following brewers' efforts to provide new products to meet consumers' changing tastes, for example, fruity or dry and smooth products, but the downtrend remains to be reversed. 
Sake was generally seen as tacky and unfashionable until recently. Such a negative image is beginning to be corrected. In the past 10 years or so, Japanese sake products, especially high-quality rice wine brands, caught on well with consumers in Western countries and in some Asian markets. 
Sake brewers also have had a follow wind at home. "Sake is cool." Unconventional consumers, such as young men and women, feel so. Consumers in their 50s and 60s or older follow suit, saying, "Why don't we try sake once again." 
Usaku Nakao, the owner of Ayasugi Co., a time-honored sake brewer in Fukuoka City, feels that the decades-long downtrend is coming to an end at long last. He recalls that domestic sake consumption for 2011 grew about 2 percent year on year. It was the year when widely scattered areas in northeastern Japan were hit by a devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami killer waves.
The mishap, which claimed about 18,000 lives, initially made Japanese hesitant about drinking, but a young sake brewer in an earthquake-hit area issued a message on the youtube site calling for supporting affected small brewers by drinking, not refraining from drinking. This gave a boost to sake consumption in Tokyo and elsewhere, as the disaster reminded Japanese of the importance of their traditional culture and habits. 

I was long waiting for you to return, having prepared sake with finely fermented rice, but it was all in vain. You, my love, did not come to me. 
 (A personal translation) 

This is a poem made by Lady Kuramochinouji and included in Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, which was compiled in the eighth century. 
Today’s sake brewing technique has come to an extremely high level, Nakao says. Sake rice wine is made from rice and water, coupled with “koji” rice malt and yeast. Rice brewers now have very advanced systems and knowhow for, among other things, controlling temperature for the fermentation process, polishing, or shaving, rice grains to have the purest possible ingredient, and selecting and culturing healthy, fine koji malts and yeasts. 
Shinozaki had an encouraging news from abroad this year. The company’s new “Hiramatsu” rice wine brand, launched on top of its flagship “Kunigiku” label, was served at the Japan Night event as part of the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. 
"The tide has changed,” said Michiaki Shinozaki, who assists his father as director in charge of management and planning. “We have inherited our (sake brewing) technique over years, but we were not necessarily active about selling sake products,” he said. “We have launched the Hiramatsu brand, but we couldn’t do such a thing until a few years ago.” 
Sake brands account for only less than 10 percent of alcoholic and other drinks turned out by Shinozaki. “Shochu” distilled spirits account for half of the total and “amazake” fermented rice-based sweet drinks 40 percent. 
Japan’s government is drumming up to increase sake exports to foreign countries. The campaign represents an effort to demonstrate Japan’s cultural assets extensively to the rest of the world.
Ambitious sake brewers are poised to take the occasion to increase their export business, though they have to overcome linguistic and other barriers to reach foreign consumers. In 2013, “washoku” traditional Japanese cuisines were recognized by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage. President Shinozaki, the seventh owner in the family’s 200 years of history, sounded cautiously optimistic about the future sake business in foreign markets. 
"Sake and washoku are a best combination, you know.” He said. "Sake makes washoku dishes even more tasteful, and people say sake rice wine can go with meat dishes, too.”
Ayasugi, whose sake business dates back to 1793, provides its products to Kashiigu Shrine, a local old Shinto shrine, for its rites every spring and autumn. The company and its sake brand are named after an old sacred cedar tree at the shrine. 
Ayasugi hangs a new “sugidama” ball of fine cedar branches at the entrance of the shop every year, as other brewers do. The item is an indication that “We have come up with the year’s new brew.”
"Sake is always beside us, Japanese. Served on various special occasions, sake enables us to share joys and sorrows all the time,” Nakao says. He believes that sake is a blessing from nature. “We hang the sugidama ball while thanking for nature.”