How Japanese Sake Breweries are Coping with the Covid-19 Pandemic
Here in North America, as we sake fans raised our glasses to kanpai with each other on World Sake Day, I thought about the brewers in Japan whose resilience has been stretched to the limit during this long pandemic. We’re far from the brewing action, and there’s naturally an effort on the part of brewers to keep up a positive public face. But occasionally glimpses of the hardships they are enduring surface amid the noise of information we all live in.
One good thing is that vaccine rates are up, infections are down, and restrictions on restaurants and izakayas selling alcohol were lifted earlier this month. But to get a better picture of what’s happening, I contacted a few brewers to see how they were faring. Rumiko Moriki of Moriki Brewery in Mie Prefecture is among those who are still hurting. The biggest hit the brewery took, she says, was in sales to domestic metropolitan restaurants after restrictions on alcohol sales were imposed. Sales are down 70 percent from what they were two years ago, and although there has been some governmental assistance, it hasn’t been enough. “In 2020, she explained, “If we lost more than half of our sales compared to 2019, the government only gave us 200,000 yen (about 1,765 USD) per company.”
Kamoizumi Brewery president Kazuhiro Maegaki reported that there were months when his sales dipped by more than fifty percent, and that total sales are down 20 to 30 percent compared to pre-pandemic times. Although a recovery has been underway since about May, he notes that the domestic market has still not recovered.
It has not help that alcohol consumption in Japan, as in the rest of the world, has been on the decline, and that the government has strictly regulated izakaya hours, even going so far as to pressure breweries not to sell to such establishments. About a week ago, Montreal sake importer L’Eau et le Riz announced the closing of one of the breweries it represents, Kubota Shuzo in Hiroshima (makers of the Hishimasamune brand, not to be confused with Asahi Shuzo in Niigata, makers of the Kubota brand), noting that it was not able to survive the pandemic.
Both Moriki and Maegaki expressed shock and anger at the government’s failure to keep its promise of allowing liquor shops to exercise voluntary self-restraint in selling to restaurants and izakaya, instead putting pressure breweries not to sell to retailers and establishments (which, by the way, were not strictly forbidden by law to buy or sell alcohol).
“Our job is to make and sell sake, and to contribute to society by bringing happiness to our customers,” Maegaki says. “But the current situation is one in which people think drinking sake is bad for society, and that it contributes to the spread of Covid.” Moriki notes, “It’s really terrible to think that izakayas, which serve decent food and sake, are the source of infection. And it was unreasonable for banks to put pressure on us not to sell to liquor stores and restaurants.” Maegaki cites one survey he read which said that half of Japanese believe that the government has gone overboard in restraining liquor sales, and should allow producers more of a return to market, while the other half are opposed to it. He believes that in order for his industry to continue, Japanese society is going to have to think hard about the value it places on sake brewing, and its future survival.
Most breweries have so far been able to stay afloat with the help of special-issue sakes, interesting collaborations, pivots to distilling spirits and other creative efforts. There’s been some support from the international sake community as well, like the social media campaign earlier this year that went by the #OperationYUHO hashtag. It grew out of a guest appearance by Mioya Shuzo’s president Miho Fujita on Simone Maynard’s popular Taste with the Toji interview series.
In a humorous aside made during the session, Fujita mentioned that because of the economic toll of the pandemic, she could no longer afford makanai (賄い), or purchased meals for her brewery workers. She hoped that her staff would put up with her own cooking while the hard times lasted. Sachiko Miyagi, portfolio manager with Tippsy, the online sake retailer, reached out to Monica Samuels, vice president of sake and spirits for the importer Vine Connections, and the two embarked on an effort to get sake fans all over the world to buy Mioya Shuzo’s products. Due to the supply chain crisis, Samuels notes, “there wasn’t much Yuho to be sold, but we have been ordering as much as we can.” US sales of Yuho are now up about thirty percent over the previous year.
Rumiko Moriki participated in a very small batch collaborative sake with two other Mie Prefecture owner-master brewers, from Ota and Wakaebisu Breweries. They called it Kami no Ho Aitaine Minnade. Another collaborative effort to help three challenged breweries: Moriki’s, Sogen Shuzo in Ishikawa and Wakabayashi Brewery in Nagano Prefecture involved the launch of a line of sake kasu (酒粕 sake lees) products, including three versions of a sake lees yogurt cake, each made with one of the three participating breweries’ distinctive sake lees.
Maegaki of Kamoizumi Brewery notes that the double blow to craft breweries of plummeting sales to big-city sake specialty bars and restaurants, along with the temporary collapse of the booming overseas market, has been devastating. Yet he’s been encouraged by the rebound of some markets, like those to China, which are now bigger than before the pandemic (no doubt fueled by all that post-Covid surge relief drinking). He is less optimistic about the return of the domestic market, which he predicts will happen very slowly. One factor off-setting this decline has been the rise in home consumption of sake. To meet that demand, makers are focusing on expanding their presence in supermarkets and at chains like CVS. In these outlets, sales of sake sold in paper cartons has not diminished much at all. But all of this is largely irrelevant to premium-centered craft breweries like his, which have focused on urban sales and international exports.
As for the small number of sake breweries that have or will go bankrupt during the pandemic, Maegaki believes that the pandemic alone is not to blame, but many other factors that are simply making it harder and harder for breweries—especially those catering to local, rural markets—to survive. And that, he notes, is “a big worry for the sake industry.” Just as hospitality experts have predicted in North America, Maegaki believes that the real test of survival is yet to come, when government support and subsidies are withdrawn. If the market is still slow to recover after that inflection point, things could get even worse for some breweries.
As for the Corona virus pandemic, he takes the long view that it is a passing event, like the pandemics of hundreds of years ago, and those that will undoubtedly occur in the future. Sake, meanwhile, has always had a positive effect on humans, and will continue to do so. “There are still people all over the world and within Japan who have not yet discovered the charm of sake,” he points out. “I hope and believe that there is still room to convey that charm and value to them.”
Asked what the best pandemic counter-measure his own brewery, Kamoizumi, has come up with, Maegaki responds that he doesn’t think he’s been particularly successful on that front. Yet he continues to be guided by an important, core belief, which calls for cherishing the truths of the past while testing their applicability to today’s world. He invokes a term from the Edo-period haiku poet Matsuo Basho, fueki ryukou (不易流行). It’s the idea that both the eternal and the transient are essential to good haiku, and by extension, to good sake.
Perhaps the way forward for an industry beset by short-term and long-term challenges is to honor tradition, yet adapt it to fit the tastes and fashion of the times.
In other Sake News…
The book my co-writer Michael Tremblay and I have been working so hard on, Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth, is almost ready to go to press! It’s odd to be doing final edits when the book is already available for pre-sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound, but the sales machinery is already gearing up. So please pre-order your copy now—you won’t be disappointed!
We also just learned that while the first round of South by Southwest panel selections have been made, our application—to do a panel discussion on our book at the Austin, Texas festival—is still in the running. Please send your positive wishes for our bid Texas-way, and keep your fingers crossed!
If you like this blog post, click here to sign up to receive future posts and my newsletter in your mailbox!