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Japanese Products

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Beyond the Terminology

Four Principles for Curating a Meaningful Sake Menu in Bangkok The Evolution of Bangkok’s Dining SceneThe landscape of Bangkok’s gastronomy is subtly shifting. Japanese sake, once confined to traditional establishments, is now finding a home in French bistros, Italian trattorias, and contemporary Thai dining rooms. While the presence of sake has grown significantly, a familiar […]

At −2°C for 26 Days, Then Into a −7°C Warehouse

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One Shipment: −2°C Container Setpoint and Reported −7°C Storage

A case study of one Japan–Bangkok shipment, distinguishing the −2°C container setpoint, logger readings and reported subsequent −7°C warehouse storage. Not a claim about every product or shipment.

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Tsuru-Ume Yuzu: Starting with the Fruit

The official Premier Wakayama product listing describes Heiwa Shuzo’s Tsuru-Ume Yuzu as a liqueur made with fresh yuzu juice from Wakayama Prefecture.

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From 5°C to 55°C

The Legacy of Sake’s Language and the Ten Names of Temperature When you order “hiya” in Japan, you get sake served at room temperature. Order “reishu,” and you get sake chilled in the refrigerator. For those familiar with Japan’s dining culture, the distinction is naturally understood. But overseas, it can often be the first point […]

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From 30,000 to 1,000

The Sake Industry’s “Silent Retreat” and Breweries Looking to the Moon “Japanese culture is quietly disappearing.” This is how the U.S. publication Sake Industry News frames the current landscape in its 153rd issue. Once numbering 30,000, Japan’s sake breweries have now dwindled to just over 1,000. This is not a mere incremental decline; it is a profound […]

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Pour That Demands Motion

Ikegame Shuzo’s Jelly Umeshu and the Redefined Shape of Plum Wine Before opening the bottle, a firm shake is required. While agitating a beverage is rarely customary, with “Shake-It Jelly Umeshu,” the drink simply will not pour unless you engage in this ritual. The umeshu inside has been carefully set into a delicate jelly, designed […]

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Brewing Sake in an Era of Peace

How Heiwa Shuzo’s “Ko-Tsurume” Redefined the Language of Umeshu Through Ten Years of Aging

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The Philosophy of Working Backward

February 14, 2020. It was Shingo Gokan’s 37th birthday. The bartender had won the Bacardi Legacy Global Cocktail Competition, been named International Bartender of the Year at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, and now leads SG Group, which operates more than a dozen bars across Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, and Madrid. For his birthday, he chose to release a new shochu brand. This was not a mere coincidence, but an answer to a question he had contemplated for years from behind bar counters around the world.

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The Future of Sake Rice

Sake is born from rice. Today, this fundamental truth is bringing a new set of challenges to the industry. Many of you may remember the “Reiwa rice crisis” that began in the summer of 2024. News of table rice disappearing from supermarket shelves made headlines around the world. But the ripple effects reached much deeper. The very supply base for sake-brewing rice｜known as sakamai｜is now at a structural turning point.

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A Back Bar Where Category Boundaries Begin to Blur

On a Bangkok night, I’d like you to slowly take in the back bar of a small, unassuming spot｜left to right, if you can. Next to a cask-aged rice shochu from Minamiuonuma in Niigata sits an amber-hued kokuto (brown sugar) shochu from the Amami Islands. Further along, a seven-year, oak-aged awamori from Nakijin in Okinawa waits its turn, followed by a Pinot Noir from Yoichi in Hokkaido. Beside it rests a French craft gin, distilled from hand-picked botanicals in the Loire Valley. A decade ago, such a lineup might have seemed unlikely. Clear lines divided where each belonged｜sake in Japanese restaurants, gin in bars, wine in Western dining rooms. In 2026 Bangkok, those lines are quietly beginning to dissolve.

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When the Five Senses and Data Meet in the Same Brewery

Visit a sake brewery in Japan, and you may see the tōji cup the air of the kōji room in their palm, reading temperature and humidity through the skin. “Brewing with the five senses” is a beautiful phrase. But when the person who possesses those senses is nearing their seventies, with no successor in sight, a reality emerges that beauty alone cannot resolve. As of 2026, Japan has roughly 1,100 sake breweries, representing less than half the number seen at the industry’s peak in the 1970s. Many closures are driven by a lack of successors and labor shortages. When a brewery shuts its doors, the rules of thumb stored in the tōji’s mind, such as “At this air temperature, stir the moromi 30 minutes earlier” or “When the aroma of the kōji changes like this, lower the temperature by 0.5°C,” are often lost without ever being passed on. Now, quietly but unmistakably, a movement is spreading to preserve that “vanishing intuition” as data and hand it to the next generation.

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At the Foot of Nakijin Castle

In Nakasone, Nakijin Village, Kunigami District, in the northern part of Okinawa’s main island, there is a distillery where 35 large storage tanks stand quietly at the foot of the Nakijin Castle Ruins, one of the sites that make up the UNESCO World Heritage “Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu.” Founded in 1948, Nakijin Shuzo Co., Ltd. is the only distillery in Nakijin Village. Over more than 70 years since the chaos of the postwar era, the distillery has refined its long-aged kusu, or mature awamori, into a series named “Sennen no Hibiki” ｜ “Echoes of a Thousand Years.”

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