The Japanese Sake Masters Swimming Against a Rising Tide of Whisky

OSAKA, Japan: The Japanese have been drinking sake since the eighth century. Back then, it was believed the rice-based liquor warded off ghosts.

Today, it has a stronger spirit to contend with: whisky.

Enter Nishiya, a bar in downtown Osaka, and you are given little choice of what to drink. You might fancy a glass of sake or a shot of the stronger, more bitter shochu. But regulars will insist you try another, less traditional Japanese delicacy, a highball.

“It was invented in the U.K.,” says the bartender, mixing a glass of whisky, which is spelled the Scottish way here, ice and soda. “But it was perfected in Japan.”

The cocktail has been gaining ground in the country since the late 2000s. It pairs well with the local cuisine, and provides momentary relief in neighborhood taverns, or izakaya, during the country’s hot and humid summers. Between 2015 and 2020, domestic whisky sales increased 50%. Japanese drinkers spent $3.5 billion on the spirit in 2023.

This has left sake producers struggling to find a way to keep the party going. By some measures consumption has fallen by more than 75% since the 1970s, and 30% in the past decade, displaced in part by invasive species—sometimes beer, but especially whisky.

The government in Tokyo has stepped in, introducing a network of brand ambassadors—or “sake samurai”—to help promote the ailing industry. Last year the beverage obtained Unesco world heritage status, like French Champagne or Belgian beer.

But resistance is also coming from the factory floor. Brewers have begun experimenting with new recipes of “craft” sake, adding unusual ingredients to hit hoppy, beer-inspired flavors and floral, gin-like notes. One brewery has developed an Italian-inspired “margherita” sake, blending the umami of sun-dried tomatoes with the amino acids produced during sake’s traditional brewing process.

All this to make the whisky-and-soda brigade look a little staid.

“We want to honor tradition but also create things no one has ever seen before,” said Shuhei Okazumi, founder of the Japan Craft Sake Brewers Association. This community of young, entrepreneurial toji want to upend sake’s image as the drink of a bygone era. Dedicated craft sake bars are now popping up around Tokyo. Festivals debuting new and unusual varieties from around the country are sold-out events.

“They’re like the young, punk-rock generation of sake brewing,” said Monica Samuels, one of roughly a hundred government-certified sake samurai. “For so long, mainstream Japanese culture has told people to blend in. You’re not supposed to be outrageous. The craft sake movement wants to change that.”

They could be in for a long, thirsty fight.

Whisky is now deeply entrenched in Japanese drinking culture. The country’s taste for the amber nectar can be traced back to Masataka Taketsuru, revered as the godfather of Japanese whisky, who traveled to Scotland in 1919 to serve an apprenticeship before returning to help found Japan’s first distilleries. The spirit has had its ups and downs since then, but consumption really took off when people began adding soda and ice.

Takeshi Niinami , chief executive of Suntory, Japan’s largest distillery, says shifting consumption patterns are partly demographic. Japan’s rapidly aging population means health considerations are to the fore of many drinkers’ minds, he says. Sake tends to have a high sugar content.

“When I go out for sushi, I’ll go for a highball. Because sake might be delicious, but I can’t afford the sugar. Sure I can have maybe just one glass, that’s fine. But sake is too good—you can rarely just have one,” Niinami says.

But it also speaks to a turn in local production. Many traditional sake brewers are now pivoting to whisky, attracted not only by strong domestic demand but the high prices premium varieties can command overseas. International awards , marketing campaigns and actor Bill Murray’s turn in “Lost in Translation” have whetted appetites for Japanese whisky to such an extent that a bottle of Suntory’s Yamazaki whisky, aged for 55 years, can set you back close to $1 million.

Yoichiro Nishi, an eighth-generation sake and shochu producer, opened Ontake Distillery in 2019.

Nestled in the foothills of Mount Ontake, Japan’s second-largest volcano after Fuji, the distillery strikes a blend between old and new. Dark timber panels, autumnal maple trees and natural springs recall the traditional tea houses of Kyoto, or the temples of Koyasan, but an angular, concrete walkway, echoing the masters of Japanese brutalism, suggests tradition might be taking a turn.

Inside, burnt-black sherry casks carry a single-malt whisky, now five years old. A first edition was released in 2023, taking gold at the San Francisco Wine & Spirits Competition.

Nishi acknowledges the jump from sake to whisky was far from straightforward. He recalls his fascination with the idea that a drink could improve over time, maturing for five, 10, or 20-plus years. “As a brewer of sake, a drink best consumed fresh, this was an intriguing concept,” he says.

But time is money, and whisky is by nature a waiting game. To get around this, Nishi sells casks before they have matured. While waiting, customers are invited to stay in the distillery, sample a few drams and sink a few holes in Ontake’s on-site golf course. The distillery is open to everyone—everyone who can shell out $50,000 for a cask, that is.

Nishi is one of many newcomers to the industry. In 2016, there were 10 whisky distilleries in Japan. Today there are nearly 130. But an increasingly vibrant market has come at a cost. From record highs in 2022, exports of Japanese whisky have now started falling. Many are worried that an explosion of distilleries is diluting authenticity, with blends of local and overseas whiskies commonly sold under the Japanese whisky brand.

Some are calling for tighter industry regulations. Others insist the rules are made to be broken.

“Creativity has always been vital to the Japanese spirit,” says Brian Ashcraft, an author who has written extensively on Japanese drinking culture. “Any regulation shouldn’t come at the expense of that.”

It is a sentiment shared by the craft sake movement, whose proponents hope new ideas will drive demand both domestically and abroad. Exports have roughly doubled since 2018, with sake breweries popping up around the world, from Taiwan to the U.S. and Mexico, each with their own take on the drink.

Okazumi, the craft brewer, said the new varieties could do for sake what the California roll did for sushi.

“Sometimes tradition needs to innovate to go global,” he said.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

The Japanese Sake Masters Swimming Against a Rising Tide of Whisky

Squeezed out by highballs and quality Japanese malts, the country’s sake breweries are trying to innovate to win back market share.

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.