I know what you did last summer

I went looking for updated sake export figures recently, which led me to the National Tax Agency’s July 2025 Sake no Shiori (酒のしおり) “state of sake” report (sake in the wider sense of alcohol in general, but including nihonshu/seishu in particular, and I will use sake to mean nihonshu/seishu for the rest of this section).

A lot of the introduction covers old ground if you’ve heard about these reports before (production peaked in 1973, declining population, lifestyle change, etc.) but there were a few new/updated points that caught my eye. If you want to look at the graphs as you read, the Introduction to the report is here.

Taxes on alcohol account for just 1.5% of total Japanese tax revenue, and sake generates just 3.2% of alcohol taxes, which presumably leaves it in an even weaker position with the tax authorities than with rice farmers (see the In Other News section at the end). (Fig. 5) Consumption/sale of sake fell from 581 million litres in 2013 to 391 million litres in 2023. (Fig. 6)

It looks like sake production actually increased very slightly between 2023 and 2024 before falling again in 2025 (Fig. 7), which sounds strange, but who can you trust if not the people collecting the taxes. The report is certainly clear that both “premium” (特定名称, tokutei meisho) categories as a whole and junmai/junmai ginjō alone have seen significant increases as percentage of sake shipped over the last 30 years or so. (Fig. 8)

The overall value of all sake produced has remained stable around the JPY 400 billion mark for about 35 years (JPY 384 billion in 2022) but price per unit soared between around 2013 (JPY 615/litre) and 2019 (JPY 736/litre), suffering a fall in 2020 (hello, pandemic?–to JPY 665/litre) before jumping up again in 2022 (JPY 740/litre). So there has been a lot of volume-versus-value movement in recent years. (Fig. 9)

It will come as a surprise to no-one that the new graph added in 2025 shows rice prices. (Fig. 10) The report stresses that supply and demand for sake rice varieties (酒造好適米, shuzō kōteki mai) has been stable for a long time, due to strong connections between breweries and local farmers. Price per 60 kg of Yamada Nishiki (Grade I, from Hyogo) stayed around JPY 23,600 (approx. EUR 145/USD 170) between 2013 and 2023, and Gohyakumangoku (Grade I, from Niigata) remained around JPY 16,100 (approx. EUR 88/USD 105), whereas the price of table rice fluctuated between JPY 11,000 and JPY 14,000 (approx. EUR 60 to 77/USD 71 to 90)–before soaring to JPY 22,700 (approx. EUR 124/USD 145) in 2024. Yamada Nishiki then jumped in price to JPY 24,700 (approx. EUR 134/USD 160), while Gohyakumangoku remained at JPY 16,630 (approx. EUR 91/USD 107). So, ordinary easy-to-grow table rice was briefly more expensive than some sake rice.

Moving on to export figures, the global market for alcoholic drinks grew slightly between 2022 and 2023, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the largest market, followed by Europe and the USA. The PRC and USA markets have grown over the last 10 years, while Europe has stayed mostly unchanged. (Fig. 11, Fig. 12)

Exports of Japanese alcoholic drinks seem to have peaked in 2022, then fallen slightly in 2023 and 2024. Exports of sake specifically were worth JPY 43.456 billion in 2024, up 5.8% on last year and growing slightly as a percentage of total alcohol exports. The report doesn’t make this calculation, but if the total value of sake produced is around JPY 384 billion (2022) and exports are JPY 43.456 billion (2024), then sake exports are now around or over 11% by value, which is pretty impressive compared to the mere 4% or so it was estimated at 10 years ago. (Fig. 9, Fig. 13) However, sake still accounts for just 0.1% of the global drinks market.

The NTA report also notes a recent increase in licenses issued across all forms of alcoholic drinks, attributed to the popularity of fruit-based drinks including domestic wine, sparkling beverages based on local ingredients, and the establishment of “special districts” with relaxed brewing requirements as part of structural reform measures. 4,070 sites currently hold licenses to brew or distil, compared to 3,089  in 2013. A breakdown of license types (Fig. 11) shows that the number of sake brewing licenses fell from 1,652 in 2013 to 1,525 in 2023.

Bear in mind that some breweries hold more than one license (as individual sites are licensed, not the entity that operates them) and some license holders may not be actively brewing, so the number of active sake breweries is certainly lower. It’s also not clear if the number includes export-only licenses.

Boxed text added in the “What the NTA is doing” section repeats existing concerns that farmers will move away from growing sake rice in favour of table rice due to the spike in price, which may mean there’s not enough sake rice being grown to meet demand. Which I’m sure breweries, farmers and their organisations are hard at work to resolve.

The NTA also repeats its commitment to developing exports, including through raising awareness at international hubs such as “Japan House” in major cities worldwide, inviting drinks specialists to visit Japanese breweries and distilleries, subsidising breweries and distilleries developing themselves as sites for sakagura tourism for inbound tourists, subsidising initiatives to create high value-added products and using Geographical Indications (GIs) to strengthen regional branding.

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酒のしおり (National Tax Agency, July 2025)