Japanese Sake, Read through Its Breweries

What may be labelled “Nihonshu”

In December 2015 the National Tax Agency designated Nihonshu as a geographical indication for seishu. Under that designation, only seishu made exclusively from domestically grown rice and produced in Japan may be labelled Nihonshu. Products using imported rice, or produced outside Japan, cannot carry the name even when they meet the Liquor Tax Act definition of seishu.

Under that Act, seishu is made by fermenting rice, rice koji and water, and must be filtered. Its alcohol content is below 22 percent. The filtering step is the legal boundary between seishu and unfiltered products such as doburoku.

These are labelling and category rules. Holding a licence, or having products on the market, does not establish the quality of an individual product or its eligibility for a special designation.

Reading the eight special designations

Under the Standard for Manufacturing Methods and Quality Labelling of Seishu, established as a National Tax Agency notice in November 1989 and applied from April 1990, only seishu meeting defined requirements may carry a special designation. The requirements combine rice polishing ratio, permitted ingredients and koji rice proportion.

The rice polishing ratio is the weight of the polished rice relative to the brown rice it came from. A ratio of 60 percent means 40 percent of the outer layer has been removed. Where brewer’s alcohol is permitted, it is capped at 10 percent of the white rice weight. White rice used for special designations must be milled from brown rice graded third class or above under the Agricultural Products Inspection Act.

The rice polishing requirement for Junmai-shu, formerly 70 percent or less, was removed in the 2003 revision, and a koji rice proportion of 15 percent or more was added across all special designations. This is why polishing figures alone cannot be compared across the old and current standards.

What the label must and must not say

The same standard sets three layers of rules for all seishu.

Required items include the ingredient names, with the rice polishing ratio shown adjacent for special designations; storage or consumption notes for seishu shipped without heat treatment; the country of origin for imports; disclosure where foreign-produced seishu is used; the producer’s name; the address of the production site; the volume; the category; and the alcohol content. These are shown in Japanese characters, as a rule at eight point or larger.

Prohibited items include superlative terms such as highest, first or representative in an industry sense; terms creating the impression of an award at a competition; terms creating the impression of government endorsement; and terms resembling a special designation on seishu that does not qualify, unless accompanied by explanatory labelling.

A revision effective 1 January 2023 moved the production date from a required item to an optional one. The provision on describing awards was abolished, and misleading award or government-endorsement claims were added to the prohibited list instead. A label without a production date is not therefore in breach of the standard.

Geographical indications beyond Nihonshu

Alongside Nihonshu, which covers the whole country, 22 regional geographical indications have been designated for seishu, making 23 in total as of 31 July 2026. The earliest is Hakusan in Ishikawa, designated in December 2005; the most recent are Kyoto, Tottori and Fukuoka, all designated on 1 October 2025.

Each regional indication has its own defined area and production standard. A brewery being located in the same prefecture is not the same as meeting that indication’s production standard.

Official statistics and this directory

According to table 14 of the National Tax Agency’s Sake no Shiori, July 2025 edition, there were 1,525 licensed seishu production sites in fiscal 2023, with a further 158 sites licensed for seishu while primarily licensed for another category.

The 1,403 records in this directory are counted differently. They are not an administrative count of licensed sites but an edited record of breweries, producers and their representative brands drawn from published primary sources, and they treat dormant breweries, multi-site breweries and breweries without confirmable public information differently from the statistics. The two figures should not be treated as the same number.