Secrets of success (and failure)

What makes a sake brewery successful? What separates the likes of Dassai from breweries struggling to stay in the black?

That question took controversial Japanese entrepreneur hiroyuki (founder of 2ch) to venerable Katayama Shuzō in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture. The brewery was founded in 1880 and currently run by its embattled 7th-generation kuramoto-tōji Tomoyuki Katayama.

Katayama Shuzō are known for pressing by a method called sase, which puts minimal pressure on the fully fermented moromi to avoid generating off-flavours in the pressed sake. However, this light touch also leaves them with less sake and more, heavier and wetter kasu that still contain a lot of alcohol. (Katayama wasn’t sure about hiroyuki’s suggestion of turning the luxurious, boozy kasu into amazake due to the high alcohol content, although hiroyuki thought that and the rice-like texture could be a plus.)

Katayama had an interesting outlook on the sake industry, including his own company. He describes taking over as receiving a “negative inheritance” (debt) and notes that wherever a brewery has been handed down through several generations, not all of them will have been good at managing finances. He’s 55 and has two children, and if either of them says they want to take over he’ll agree only so long as he can get the business back into the black first. And if he can’t… there’s no guarantee the company will survive. He took over himself when already in his 50s and challenged himself to get the business back onto a stable footing within a decade before making a decision. That time is halfway up.

Kobayashi Shuzō appeared in a previous newsletter–a rare new brewery set up in a disused school that focuses on made-to-order sake. They’ve been in operation for less than a year but have already received 70 orders, which cost around JPY 200,000 each. 

One of the biggest obstacles they faced was getting hold of a sake brewing license, as the government has not issued any in around 70 years due to declining consumption. They eventually found a brewery in Tochigi Prefecture that they could take over in order to acquire their license.

New brewery owner Ichizo Kobayashi has an even more pessimistic view of the state of the sake industry. The number of sake licenses has halved from approximately 3000 in 1955 to around 1500 today–and half of the remaining breweries are in the red or close to it. So, wouldn’t it make sense to sell the license? Not always, he notes, as many sake breweries are operated by influential locals who would rather go out of business than sell.

Exports still have potential, but Katayama recalls a conversation with a French sommelier who agreed wholeheartedly that sake goes with everything and could be served before, during and after meals… but it’s still more profitable for a restaurant to sell wine. Kobayashi, meanwhile, points out that global warming is making it more difficult to make wines that age well, opening the door for aged sake–plus food culture worldwide is becoming closer to Japanese cuisine. Many of the custom orders he is filling are for sake designed to match restaurants’ signature dishes.

The two brewery owners also sound a note of caution for the potential of aged sake, particularly as a way to increase price: Katayama points out that it’s not as easy to produce a sake to be aged or to age a sake as it is for wine, while Kobayashi notes that Japanese people are used to drinking their sake young and still prefer it that way.

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This reminds me of a conversation with a kuramoto in a different part of Japan last year, who expressed concern for many of the sake breweries in his prefecture because they had historically supplied major breweries in Nada (who, at the time, could not brew enough to keep up with demand)– he found it hard to see how many of them could keep going after having lost their biggest (only?) customer, especially seen the effort and cost of modernising and switching to smaller volume higher value production.

Kobyashi’s point about owners not wanting to sell was also interesting. Some breweries owned by influential families are part of a portfolio of companies which means that other, more profitable businesses can subsidise the sake brewery. And where a brewery owner is focused on their legacy or responsibility to the community, they will not be willing to sell to just anyone.

世界で高評価「日本酒」消費量がピーク時の1/4に…直撃する存続危機 経営難に新規参入の壁も ひろゆき氏が見た現実・課題・可能性 (Yahoo News, 3 May 2025, Japanese)
株式会社昭和製作所 (accessed 20 May 2025, Japanese)