4th Generation Kazuhiro Sakurai Takes Us Into Dassai: On Growing Up Within Wooden Walls Of The World’s Most Acclaimed Sake Brewery, First Look At The New York Sake Experiment, Thoughts On The Craft Sake Movement & Plans To Make Sake On The Moon

“The image I have of it is an iPhone, or a smartphone: something that is updated, upgraded, moved to a new version. The same thing, but continually upgraded… And that is where we differ from houses that never change their flavour at all, that protect precisely the same taste for a hundred years.” 

– 4th Generation Owner and President of Dassai Inc., Kazuhiro Sakurai, on Dassai’s spirit of relentless improvement

For the vast majority of drinkers around the world, Dassai Sake, with its iconic numbered bottles (Dassai 23, 39, 45), is the sake they recognise before they know quite how sake is even made. It’s closely associated with premium junmai daiginjo sake, with a clear, fragrant style that travels easily beyond the country in which sake was once expected to remain.

The story began with a brewery named Asahi Shuzo in Osogoe, a mountain valley in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, where the Sakurai family ran a small operation whose prospects were anything but assured. The 3^rd-generation brewery owner Hiroshi Sakurai, who took charge in the 1980s, was credited with rescuing a faltering table sake business with his dramatic change of direction – concentrating on making refined sake from highly polished Yamada Nishiki rice and creating the Dassai brand in 1990. In the decades that followed, that small brewery steadily grew to become indisputably the most celebrated sake in the world.

Much of what makes Dassai different lies in an apparent contradiction. While the brewing company was formally registered in 1948 and traces its brewing roots further back to around 1770, this is an incredibly nimble house (in Japanese, 逃げ足の速さ, nigeashi no hayasa) ready to move away from an old approach the moment it has discovered a better way of doing things. It retains many labour-intensive parts of sake-making, including cultivating koji on rice by hand all year round, but the old ways are only preserved where they help make a better sake.

The brewery was amongst the first to operate without the centuries-old tōji system – in which an experienced master brewer orchestrates brewing seasonally. Dassai replaced that with a year-round brewing team that closely studies brewing data. The team does not hold on to tradition for tradition’s sake.

Besides rethinking centuries-old sake brewing practice in Japan, Dassai created an unprecedented 23% polishing ratio sake - the Dassai 23 - that first grabbed the public's attention for the sheer labour and difficulty in achieving such a feat. (Image Source: Dassai)

Dassai Inc’s 4^th-generation owner and current President Kazuhiro Sakurai shared with us during our interview how the brewing team is able to constantly refine the quality of its sake thanks to the sheer number of batches Dassai brews each year (about 3,000). Kazuhiro-san compares Dassai’s quality evolution with the way a new smartphone model is shipped regularly. This, he says, is the essential difference between Dassai and houses that focus on preserving the same taste for over a century. 

During our conversation, we constantly returned to a mantra that drives Kazuhiro-san: to make delicious sake that brings joy to people. That appears simple enough until our conversation reaches the choices that follow: Should a brewery capitalise on scarcity or make enough sake for ordinary people to buy? Should a producer flatter the market with constant novelty? What counts as a ‘good sake’ in another culture, say in New York or Europe?

Kazuhiro-san’s response to that last question was surprisingly profound. He believes that a good sake can only gradually emerge out of a continued conversation between the brewer and the drinker over a long period of time. “As we exchange with them, our own senses and our own picture of what a delicious sake is gradually change,” Kazuhiro-san explained to us.

Here is our big interview with Kazuhiro Sakurai of Dassai Inc that traces his whole journey in sake, beginning with his memories of growing up and playing hide-and-seek in a wooden brewery, before we move through the making of Dassai Sake, and eventually the question of what sake will become in New York or on the Moon.

“It was a wooden kura (蔵), so it had its dark corners; wonderful for hide-and-seek, though I remember finding it a little frightening. And when I went to see the tōji and the brewery hands (蔵人, kurabito), they would give me sweets, or grilled sake lees (酒粕, sakekasu) to eat. They were a very close presence in my life.”

–Kazuhiro Sakurai, on the unique experience of growing up in a sake brewery

[88 Bamboo]: You were born in Shuto-cho (Iwakuni City), and grew up inside the family brewery compound in the Yamaguchi hills, back when the company still went by its old name, Asahi Shuzo. And yet, unlike so many who carry a producer’s name, you have said you were never explicitly told to take over. To us that seems a rare restraint, and a real generosity of spirit, on your father Mr Hiroshi Sakurai’s part: he appears to have given you the room to find your own way rather than pressing the family trade upon you, so that you were free to explore your interests in Tokyo, at Waseda, and then join a company with nothing at all to do with sake (清酒).

Could you take us back to what it was like to grow up with the brewery as your home?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Our house and the brewery were originally joined together, and we lived inside the brewery itself. In those early days we brewed only through the winter, when the master brewer (杜氏, tōji) and his men would come to make the sake, so we took our meals with them right through the season.

Outside the winter months, when the tōji were away, there were still brewery people about – those who handled the shipping, and in summer the sales staff who managed dispatch – and they would all have lunch together. On the days I came home early from school I would find them eating, with my mother and one other member of the support staff doing the cooking.

Naturally, I went into the brewery to play as well. It was a wooden kura (蔵), so it had its dark corners; wonderful for hide-and-seek, though I remember finding it a little frightening. And when I went to see the tōji and the brewery hands (蔵人, kurabito), they would give me sweets, or grilled sake lees (酒粕, sakekasu) to eat. They were a very close presence in my life.

Although, thinking back, in the very earliest years – before I turned eight – our house stood a little apart from the brewery. That was the period when my father, now our Chairman, had fallen out with my grandfather and been dismissed from the brewery. It was only after my grandfather passed away that our family came to live inside the brewery.

[もともと、家と酒蔵がくっついていましたし、酒蔵の中にもともと住んでいました。その頃は、最初は冬の時期に、杜氏さんが来てくれて、酒を造ってくれてましたんで、食事なんかも彼らと一緒にずっと取ってました。 冬の時期以外の、杜氏さんたちがいない時期も、酒蔵の、例えば、出荷をやってくれる人たちとか、夏の時期も、出荷をやってる営業の人たちなんかも、昼ごはんを一緒に食べてましたんで、早く学校から帰ってきた日なんかは、そういった人たちがごはんを食べていて、私の母と、もう1名ぐらいのサポートするメンバーが、昼ごはんとか作ってましたね。 で、当然、酒蔵の中も、遊びに入っていったりして、木造の蔵なんで、やっぱりちょっと暗い部分とかもあって、かくれんぼはいいけど、やっぱりちょっと怖いなという印象を持ちながら、杜氏とか蔵人のところに遊びに行くと、お菓子とか、酒粕を焼いたものを食べさせてもらえるんで、すごく身近な存在でしたね。 ただ、思い出してみると、一番初期、私がまだ8歳になる前は、酒蔵からちょっと離れたところに家があったんですね。その頃を思い起こしてみると、今会長である父と祖父が喧嘩をして、父は酒蔵を首になった時期だったんです。 だから、祖父が亡くなってから、私たちのファミリーは酒蔵の中に住むようになりましたね。]

The mountainous Yamaguchi Prefecture where Dassai was born (Image Source: Dassai)

[88 Bamboo]: How present was the family business in the background of daily life? Were you drawn into the trade at all as a boy, through the seasonal rhythms of the brewery or the talk around the dinner table? Or did it remain firmly your father’s world while you looked elsewhere?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: It was very much a family business, and although my father and grandfather were not on good terms, my grandfather was still my grandfather. So even during those difficult years I would go over to the brewery to visit him. The brewery and the family home were always, in my mind, bound closely together. And once we were actually living inside the brewery, I saw my mother cooking for the brewery hands (蔵人, kurabito) and my father drinking with them, so the two were entirely of a piece.

At that age I simply assumed I would succeed to the brewery. It was the family business; I never questioned it, and thought that when I grew up I would take it over.

That said, I went to junior high school and high school in Hiroshima Prefecture, next door to our part of Yamaguchi Prefecture, and then on to university in Tokyo. As that distance gradually opened up, I came to understand that a family business does not have to mean simply inheriting it, and that other options were open to me.

And my own father had, after all, quarrelled with my grandfather and left the company. Having come back, he understood how difficult running a sake brewery really is. Between the father-and-son relationship, and the fact that the company still stood a very real chance of going under, I think inviting his son into it frightened him. So he never once said to me that I should come back.

Because of what had happened between my grandfather and my father – the argument, and his leaving the company – he knew that working together in earnest means having to be hard on one another at times, and to fight things out. I think he was afraid of doing that with me while I had not yet made up my own mind.

[いや、ファミリービジネスとして酒蔵をやってましたし、父と祖父が仲が悪かったとはいえ、私にとっては祖父は祖父なんで、その仲が悪い時期も、酒蔵の方には訪ねていっていましたし。密接に、酒蔵と実家はくっついているというイメージはずっとありました。 で、実際に酒蔵の中に住むようになっても、まあ、母は蔵人たちの食事を作っているし、父も、そのメンバーと一緒に酒を飲んだりしてる、というのを見てますんで、ずっと一体のもので、その頃は自然に酒蔵を継ぐものなんだと思ってました。ファミリービジネスなんで、何も疑問を持たず、大きくなったら酒蔵を継ぐんだろうなと思ってました。 ただ、中学校、高校は、山口県の私たちのエリアから隣の広島県に通いましたし、大学は東京にある大学に通って、徐々に徐々に、そこの距離が離れていくのと一緒に、ファミリービジネスとして、継ぐだけじゃなくて、いろんな選択肢がある、ファミリービジネスだからといって、継ぐだけのものじゃないんだというのも分かってきた、というのも確かなんです。 で、実際に、私の父も、祖父と喧嘩をして、会社を離れている。で、戻ってきて、酒蔵の経営というのが、すごく難しいというのも理解している。だから、親子関係と、まだまだ会社が潰れる可能性がすごく高いところに息子を誘うというのは、やっぱり本人も怖かった、というのもあって、特に、戻るんだ、という話は、彼からはなかったですね。 祖父と父が喧嘩をして、彼が会社を辞めたという経験があるんで、やっぱり仕事の面で、シビアにやっていく中では、やっぱりすごく厳しく言わなきゃいけない、厳しくお互い喧嘩しなきゃいけない面もあって、それをするというのも、本人が覚悟を決めてない状態でやるのは、怖かったというのはある、と思ってます。]

“That was the first ripple. And as that ripple spread, my understanding of our own sake deepened, and so did my understanding of the joy that sake gives people. That, in the end, is what led to the decision to come back.”

– Kazuhiro Sakurai, reflecting on the first time he tasted Dassai Sake as a regular customer at a restaurant.

[88 Bamboo]: You’ve mentioned how there was an occasion in Tokyo where you tried a glass of Dassai at your own expense. Drinking in an izakaya with money you had earned yourself, you ordered Dassai and were struck by how much better it tasted than other bottles at the same price. You have put the psychology of it beautifully: that when sake arrives as a gift from your parents you are not really paying attention, because you have not earned it, but that once you are spending your own money and comparing bottles, you begin to make real comparisons, and that was when you realised your family’s sake was genuinely better. There was, you have said, a second recognition too: that making good sake was a way to bring joy to people, and that was when you decided to go back.

Could you take us further into your memories of that evening? What insights and feelings did you receive from that glass of Dassai Sake bought with your own money? How were those insights and feelings different from all those bottles tasted in the family brewery in your earlier years?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: It is quite true that the glass of Dassai I bought with my own money was the trigger. But it did not turn everything on its head at a stroke, and that alone was not what made me decide to return to the company.

That was the first ripple. And as that ripple spread, my understanding of our own sake deepened, and so did my understanding of the joy that sake gives people. That, in the end, is what led to the decision to come back.

[まず、最初にちょっとだけお伝えしたい、シェアさせてほしいんですが、この1杯飲んで、自分のお金で飲んだ獺祭がきっかけになったのは確かなんですが、それで全部が大きくひっくり返って、それだけで会社に戻ると決めたわけじゃなくって、そこが最初に波紋を起こして、その波紋が広がるように、自分のとこのお酒の理解とか、お酒が人に与える喜びの理解を深めていって、結果的に会社に戻るっていう決断になったんですよ。]

[88 Bamboo]: And on that second, deeper realisation, that good sake could bring people real joy, could you paint us the scene of how it first dawned on you? Was there a particular moment or episode you witnessed (perhaps a stranger’s delight at a first sip, or a face across a table) that made it clear to you that this was something worth giving your life to? Could you take us with you into that memory?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Yes. To say a little more about that evening: I had gone to an izakaya (居酒屋) in Tokyo, a place in Roppongi, and looking at the menu I saw our own sake on it. Most of the sake there ran to somewhere between 800 and 1,000 yen a glass.

I drank ours, and it was delicious; then I tried the others and compared them, and the first thing I realised was that our own sake tasted better. Then the master of the house told me that a great many people liked Dassai, and that a good number of them would order a second glass. To hear our sake spoken of that way made me happy – happier, in fact, than I had expected of myself.

After that I began, little by little, to seek out other places where I could drink our sake, and to go and drink there. And once I did, I would hear someone say that Dassai was good, or see someone at the next table drinking it, and I came to feel real pleasure in that. At the same time, watching closely, I could see that among the people drinking Dassai there were those who found it delicious and, of course, those who did not care for it and preferred a different sake.

Those moments left me frustrated, and in the opposite way, that too raised my motivation.

[はい。実際、その夜の話をもう少しすると、その夜、東京にある居酒屋に行って、六本木にあるお店でしたが、そこのメニューを見ていて、自分のとこのお酒があったんですね。で、だいたい、そこにあるお酒が、グラス1杯800円から1000円ぐらいのお酒がいろいろあって、その中で自分のとこのお酒を飲んで、おいしくって、他のお酒も飲んでみて、飲み比べてみても、自分のお酒がおいしかったってのに、まず気がついたんですね。 で、そのときに、そのお店の大将、マスターが、獺祭って、好きな人多いよと、おかわりする人が結構いるよ、という話をしてくれて、で、やっぱり自分のうちのお酒がそういうふうに評価されるっていうのは、すごくうれしい。自分でも、思った以上に自分の喜びがあったというのは、ありました。 で、そんなことがあったんで、そのお店だけじゃなく、自分のうちのお酒を楽しめるところというのを、やっぱりちょっとずつ探して、飲みに行くようになって、やっぱりそうなると、獺祭ってうまいのよ、という話をしてくれる人がいたり、テーブルの横で獺祭を飲んでくれてる人がいたり、っていう、そういうのが、やっぱりうれしい、とすごく思うようになってきたんです。 で、同時に、この獺祭を飲んでる人っていうのは、一生懸命見ていると、飲んでおいしいっていう人もいるし、当然、飲んで好きじゃない、もっと違うお酒が好き、とか、そういったお客さんもいる、というのも見てきて、やっぱりそういうときに、悔しいなと思うようになった、というのも、逆の意味で、やっぱり私のモチベーションを上げていったんですよ。]

“Watching customers drink it and ask for refills reminded me of a fundamental truth: whether in our local town, across Japan, or overseas, the joy people find in delicious food and drink is exactly the same.”

– Kazuhiro Sakurai, on the Dassai Blue New York Sake

[88 Bamboo]: What did Dassai Sake mean to you when you were growing up? How has its meaning changed for you now as someone taking over the helm?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: When I was small, Dassai did not exist at our brewery at all. It appeared when I was around junior high school age, as one sake among several, and my sense of it was little more than ‘so this is a sake we make now’. I had almost no experience of drinking it myself, and was in no position to judge its taste.

After that, from my university years through to when I began working, I would of course drink Dassai whenever I went home, and my family would send me Dassai and other sake to drink. But that was drinking on my own, or at most with close friends, rather than out among other people, so it was very difficult to form any judgement of it as a brand. Even when I thought it delicious, there was no strong feeling attached to the judgement.

So what changed it, I think, was drinking it at that izakaya in Tokyo, and then going on to all sorts of other places. That was when it came home to me again that people eat and drink in order to be happy, and that a delicious sake can play its part in that.

[小さい頃は獺祭というのは、うちの酒蔵にはなくって、存在自体もしなかったんですね。で、中学ぐらいのときに、いくつかあるお酒の1つとして獺祭が出始めて、こんなお酒があるんだ、ぐらいの感覚だったんですが、まだまだ自分で飲むという経験はほとんどなくって、味の評価というのもできてなかった状態です。 で、そのあとに、大学生から、まあ、社会人になるぐらいまでの間に、もちろん、実家に帰ったら獺祭を飲みますし、実家から獺祭も他のお酒も送ってきてくれて、飲むんですが、どうしても、それは他の人との交わりの中で飲むというよりは、仲のいい友達と飲むぐらいしかない、か、自分だけで飲む、というものだったんで、ブランドとしての評価が、やっぱりなかなかしにくい状態。おいしいと思っても、あまりそこに強い感情の動きがない状態での評価だったんですよ。 だから、そこが変わっていったのは、さっき話した東京の居酒屋で飲んで、そこからいろんなお店に行くようになってから、だと思ってます。 で、そのときに、人って幸せになるために、食事も食べているし、お酒も飲んでいるというのは、やっぱり改めて感じるようになって、で、おいしいお酒っていうのは、そこの役に立つことができる、というふうに思うようになったんです。]

[88 Bamboo]: When you returned in 2006, your father gave you around a year of in-house training and then sent you, alone and without a team, to New York. By your own account you did everything in those years, from taking the waste to the disposal site to making copies at a convenience store for customer mailings, in a company then a small fraction of the size it is today.

In New York, you adopted the strategy of targeting ordinary drinkers and discovered something that has become central to how Dassai sells: that once people tasted it, they turned into what you have called jishō eigyō buchō (自称営業部長), “Self-appointed Dassai Ambassadors” who would demand to order Dassai Sake at the places they frequented.

Could you unpack that New York chapter further? What memorable interactions did you encounter, and what led you to refine your strategy in that way? How does marketing Dassai in New York differ from marketing Dassai in Japan, and do you recall what was it like when you first started to see Dassai really take off in New York?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Originally, as a standard approach to introducing sake overseas, we conducted sales visits alongside the sales staff of Japanese food wholesalers who partnered with Dassai. However, an unknown–and expensive–sake from Yamaguchi Prefecture barely sold. A full day of making calls would yield no more than a couple of small 300ml bottles.

Faced with this reality, we shifted our strategy towards helping the restaurants that already carried Dassai grow, supporting them through staff training and customer events. In doing so, we met customers who truly loved Dassai, and they became our brand advocates. Ultimately, this mirrored the exact same pattern we had experienced in Japan.

[88 Bamboo]: What did your early experiences with the New York wine and spirits market (including the early challenges and successes) teach you about the way sake really travels across cultures?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: At first, I didn't believe the overseas market would accept Japanese sake.

But watching customers drink it and ask for refills reminded me of a fundamental truth: whether in our local town, across Japan, or overseas, the joy people find in delicious food and drink is exactly the same.

“The key to Dassai as a sake – and this is the same for me as it was for my father – is the continual pursuit of deliciousness, and the continual evolution of its quality.”

– Kazuhiro Sakurai, on what he believes is the true essence of Dassai

[88 Bamboo]: Before we turn to how Dassai is made, we hope to hear how you define what it is. All of our readers know many things that make Dassai distinctive: a single rice, Yamada Nishiki, its reputation for refined and highly polished sake that first made its name – including the clean, translucent character, the toumeikan (透明感), that so many reach for.

But we would like to ask the person who knows it best: In your opinion, what is the true essence of Dassai? What is the one thing that makes Dassai Sake unmistakably different from other sakes?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The key to Dassai as a sake – and this is the same for me as it was for my father – is the continual pursuit of deliciousness, and the continual evolution of its quality.

The foundation of that goes back to when my father took over the company. The business was going badly, and the ordinary table sake (普通酒, futsūshu) that our master brewer (杜氏, tōji) was making – the cheap, casual sake – simply did not taste good. His attempt to move that forward is where all of it began.

 

Even when Dassai was first born, I do not believe it was the best-tasting sake, or anything close to it. We took on the challenge of making it better and better, little by little. Our tōji grew tired of that pursuit and left, and yet we carried on pursuing it regardless. That is the historical thread running through it. I inherited that, and I have become President carrying it, so I hold a very strong conviction that deliciousness is something that can keep evolving, something that can always be made better. Our sake is therefore always being updated. The image I have of it is an iPhone, or a smartphone: something that is updated, upgraded, moved to a new version. The same thing, but continually upgraded.

And that is where we differ from houses that never change their flavour at all, that protect precisely the same taste for a hundred years. Not that either approach is better than the other; they are simply different.

[そうですね。獺祭っていうお酒の、いちばん鍵になる部分、これは私も私の父も変わらないんですが、おいしさを追求し続けて、品質も進化し続ける、ということだと思ってます。 これ、もともと、私の父が会社を継いで、で、経営的にうまくいかないときに、杜氏が造る普通酒、安いカジュアルなお酒が、おいしくないところを進化させようとして、やり始めたことが、やっぱり大きなベースになってるんですよ。 で、獺祭が生まれた最初も、やっぱりそれは、すごくおいしい、ベストな味のものじゃなかった、と思ってますし、それを徐々に徐々においしくしていくことにチャレンジしていき、その中でおいしくしていくことに嫌気がさして、杜氏がやめて、でもそれでも追求していくというのを続けていった、というのが、歴史的な流れとしてあるんです。 だから、そこを引き継いで、私も社長になっていますんで、やっぱりおいしさっていうのは、どんどんどんどん進化できるものだ、より良くできるものだ、というのをすごく強く認識していますんで、私たちのお酒っていうのは、常にそこはアップデートしていっています。 私の持ってるイメージっていうのは、iPhoneとかスマートフォンのような、アップデートしていく、グレードアップ、バージョンアップしていく、というものなんですね。同じものだけどアップグレードしていくものです。

そうです。だからそこが、まったく味を変えない、とか、ほんとに同じ味を100年守る、そういうところと違うところ、どっちがいいわけじゃなくて、違うところだと思ってます。]

[88 Bamboo]: What is one interesting fact about Dassai Sake that most drinkers do not know?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: If I had to name something surprising that most drinkers do not know, I would say it is how many people we have making the sake.

Because we are often described as brewing without a master brewer (杜氏, tōji), or as brewing all year round, a great many people assume we have taken the human element out and built a system that makes sake by machine and automation.

The reality is quite the opposite. We currently have 210 brewery hands (蔵人, kurabito), which was recently certified by Guinness World Records as the largest number in Japan. It is a very large team indeed.

And what actually made that possible was the departure of the tōji. Precisely because we could do away with the way the tōji turned the craft into a black box, withholding information and know-how, we were able to create an environment in which everyone can pursue quality together.

[そうですね。飲み手の多くが知らない意外な部分というので言うと、すごく酒造りをする人が多い、というのがあると思ってます。 よく、これは杜氏を使っていない、とか、一年中お酒を造ってる、とか、そういった話から、私たちが人を排除して、機械を使ったり、オートメーションでお酒を造るシステムというのを作った、というふうに思う人が多いんですね。 ただ、それは実際には違って、今、210名の酒蔵の蔵人がいますが、日本で一番多い人数として、この前ギネスに認定されましたし、非常に人数としては多いんです。 これは実際には、杜氏がいなくなったことによって、これができるようになったんです。杜氏がブラックボックス化して、情報をシェアしない、ノウハウをシェアしないところをなくしていけるからこそ、皆が品質を追求していける環境が作れたんです。]

Brewery workers in Dassai's all-important koji room that is open almost all-year-round (Source: Dassai)

[88 Bamboo]: On one hand, Dassai is perhaps one of the most data-driven breweries in Japan: from our masterclass with you in Singapore, we learnt that each tank of moromi is carefully monitored at all times, and steered against a fixed reference curve on a chart. On the other, it is carefully handmade: koji grown entirely by hand around the clock, rice washed by hand in ten-kilogram lots, all under the banner of tema, of effort and human care.

We would like to understand how you hold the two concepts together. How do you judge and decide what processes should be handled by the data and the machines, and what processes would always require a human hand and human senses?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: This balance keeps changing all the time. As technology advances, what we are capable of doing evolves along with it.

By constantly striving to brew delicious sake–trying out new techniques and adopting them whenever they work–a natural balance gradually takes shape.

Dassai choses to empower its employees to use data, machinery, and every available tool in order to surpass the skills and intuition of a traditional toji (master brewer). (Image Source: Dassai)

“We do not think of production and research as separate departments. It is the production side itself that tries things out. So whenever someone has an idea, or a thought that doing something a certain way might improve the flavour, we begin by trying it as a small batch.”

[88 Bamboo]: And with no single toji carrying the craft in his head, the knowledge once held by a lone master now lives across your brewing team. How do you capture something as elusive as the tactile feeling of good koji or the read of a mash, and pass it on, both across a team of that size and to the next generation of brewers coming up behind you?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The Toji system was originally designed around the idea that the core of the sake-making process could be outsourced to an external group of master craftsmen–a setup that was very convenient for sake breweries. However, precisely because the Toji came from the outside, their know-how easily became a black box.

In the case of Dassai, we overcame this challenge through a data-driven approach, allowing us to move beyond that black box. That said, data alone isn't enough to craft good sake. No matter how advanced machines become, technology by itself won't produce exceptional sake. At the same time, relying solely on human craftsmanship–while romantic–doesn't guarantee success either. As mentioned earlier, what matters most is using every tool available while constantly choosing what works best.

A sample moromi control sheet shared by Kazuhiro during a masterclass, which illustrates the amount of data tracked by the brewing team. This sheet follows one tank of Dassai 23 from the first day to pressing, a column at a time.

“What makes this possible, I think, is the sheer number of times we brew each year. We currently brew three thousand times a year, so if an experiment does not come off, we can recover it with the other sake.”

[88 Bamboo]: Further, are there still parts of the craft that can only ever move from one pair of hands to another? If so, how does Dassai’s team manage the transmission of sake-making mastery from senior brewers to junior brewers?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Instead of brewing in large tanks all at once, Dassai uses small, inefficient tanks and produces many individual batches. We do this over 3,000 times a year–a number that would take a typical sake brewery decades to reach.

This volume enables us to run quality improvement cycles (PDCA) at high speed, while simultaneously driving the hands-on learning and transfer of skills among our brewers.

(Image Source: Dassai)

[88 Bamboo]: The Dassai brand has attained such symbolic weight that very few brands could ever reach.

In 2014, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wanted to give US President Obama something quintessentially Japanese, he reached for Dassai Sake; the following year, the two leaders were welcomed at a White House state dinner with a toast of your Dassai 23. These widely publicised moments have captured how far Dassai has travelled from that mountain valley. Dassai has become a national calling card, the bottle Japan reaches for when it wants to introduce itself to the world.

As the person who now leads the brewery, what does it mean to you, personally, to steward a sake that has become such a large symbol. How does it feel to be, for so many people in not only Japan but around the world, the face of Japanese sake?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The image we hold is of an athlete at the Olympics or the World Cup. You are born in your own region – Japan, or Asia – you represent it, and you go out into the world to compete. In sake’s case that means competing against champagne, wine and whisky. That is the picture I always have in mind.

So it is not that we are constantly thinking about Japanese sake (日本酒, nihonshu) as a whole. But at the same time, we do this in the belief that our going out into the world and competing in earnest can also become the occasion for people everywhere to come to know sake as a whole, and perhaps the culture and the merits of the whole of Asia.

[そうですね。私たちがイメージとして持ってるのが、オリンピックとかワールドカップのプレイヤーのようなものなんですよ。日本とか、アジアとか、自分たちのエリアを代表して、そこで生まれて、世界中に行って戦っていく、日本酒だとシャンパンとかワインとかウイスキーと戦っていくようなものを常にイメージしています。 だから、常に日本酒全体のことを考えているわけでもない。でも同時に、私たちが一生懸命世界に出ていって戦っていくことが、日本酒全体とか、もしかするとアジア全体の、その文化とか良さに対して、世界中に知ってもらうきっかけにもなる、と思ってやっています。]

[88 Bamboo]: How does it feel like to be leading such a big symbol? People see Dassai not just as a brewery, but a symbol of Japan.

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: I do not feel much pressure on that score. We are simply pursuing a sake that we find delicious and trying to introduce it to the world.

At the same time, I do understand that in some small way this carries Asian culture and Japanese culture outward, and connects to people’s enjoyment. But what we are doing is simply getting people to drink good sake, so I do not feel much pressure in it.

[そこはあまりプレッシャーを感じていない、というか、私たちは単純に自分たちがおいしい酒を追求して、それを世界中に紹介しようとしてるだけなんですね。ただ同時に、それが少しは、アジアの文化、日本の文化とかを伝えていって、人の喜びにつながってる、ということも理解しているんですね。ですんで、やってることは単にうまい酒をみんなに飲んでもらう、ということなんで、あまりそこにプレッシャーは感じていないです。]

“You must take on the challenge as early as you can, but recognise a failure immediately, and then either change direction or stop – and repeat that.”

– Kazuhiro Sakurai, on the nimbleness and adaptability that he acquired from Hiroshi Sakurai, his father who conceived of the Dassai brand

[88 Bamboo]: Dassai now shapes the very industry that feeds it, buying about a quarter of all the Yamada Nishiki grown in Japan and, in doing so, Dassai helps to sustain the farmers and the future of the most remarkable but demanding Yamada Nishiki rice. We would like your perspective on both sides of that.

What are the responsibilities, and the causes, that Dassai precisely because of its scale and standing, has taken upon itself to look after?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: We don't really focus on trying to act "for the good of the entire sake industry." Everyone has different directions and intentions, so trying to align them only slows down our speed towards achieving actual results.

However, we've come to realise that for a brewery to remain truly sustainable, our existence needs to benefit the people around us and contribute positively to society.

Our initiatives reflect this belief–whether it's providing relief aid for global disasters, purchasing Yamada Nishiki rice at higher prices to support and encourage growers, or hosting the *Yamada Nishiki Project, where we bought 80 hyo (bales) of the finest Yamada Nishiki for 40 million yen.

* The Yamada Nishiki Project is a competition that has been held since 2019 to support the sustainability of high-quality sake rice farming and drive the evolution of sake brewing. It invites Yamada Nishiki farmers across Japan who are contracted with Dassai to challenge themselves to cultivate sake rice that surpasses existing standards. To recognise and reward the efforts of farmers who produce exceptional-quality Yamada Nishiki, Dassai purchases the Grand Prize-winning rice at a price approximately 30 times the market value.

(Image Source: Japan Sake)

[88 Bamboo]: Also, what are the challenges that Dassai still shares with every small traditional brewery in Japan?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The industry is creating its own sense of stagnation–driven by enthusiasts obsessing over rare, hard-to-find bottles, combined with how quickly brands gain recognition on social media and just as quickly get consumed and discarded.

[88 Bamboo]: The pursuit of a flavourful low-alcohol junmai daiginjo is one that your father Mr Hiroshi Sakurai, carried for the better part of twenty years. He has spoken of a long-held feeling that even the finest sake might be enjoyed by some even better if its alcohol were a touch lower; that when you drink it slowly, savouring it beside something like champagne, an ordinary sake's strength can begin to feel intrusive. The result is bottles such as Dassai 23 Elegantly Tipsy (獺祭 純米大吟醸 磨き二割三分 美酔, ‘Bisui’) and Dassai Bouquet (獺祭 花匂ふ, ‘Hana Niou’).

Now that drinkers have tasted the ‘Bisui’ (美酔) and ‘Hana Niou’ (花匂ふ), has any aspect of the consumers’ response to lower-alcohol Dassai struck you the most? And what did it confirm or clarify for you about the future direction of sake?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The market in Europe responded extremely well to Bisui.

It gave us a strong sense of a global shift towards lower alcohol content, while also revealing that there are consumers in Western markets who were interested in sake, but previously held back by its high alcohol level.

[88 Bamboo]: What else about sake do you believe could still be made better, or is waiting to be explored?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: There is no definitive answer to this yet. We're still at the stage of trial and error, working to create the best possible outcome. If we knew how to make it even better, we would have done it already.

[88 Bamboo]: For a brewery of rural beginnings, Dassai behaves less like a traditional sake house and more like a research laboratory, and the range of research you have pursued is staggering. You were the first in the sake world to press with a centrifuge, spinning the clear sake free rather than forcing it under weights, in the Dassai 23 Centrifuge Junmai Daiginjo (獺祭 純米大吟醸 磨き二割三分 遠心分離). You developed, with a medical school, the patented Hayata method of low-temperature carbon-dioxide pasteurisation, bottled as Dassai 23 Hayata (獺祭 早田 純米大吟醸 磨き二割三分), to hold a nama-like freshness in a stable bottle. You pushed past the polishing number itself with Dassai Beyond (獺祭 磨き その先へ), then inverted the whole idea with Mirai, or Dassai Future, with Farmers (獺祭 未来へ 農家とともに), milling out-of-grade rice to an astonishing eight per cent. You embraced a liquid-freezing technology, Technican's Tōmin (凍眠), to carry a just-pressed sake across the world without fading (the Dassai 39 Kanzukuri Frozen Nama / 獺祭 磨き三割九分 寒造早槽 凍結酒). And you have even reached into the science of fermentation itself, building the Shinsei DEX line (獺祭 新生 DEX) around compounds you call ‘Dassai exosomes’.

Taken together, this is a remarkable body of research for any drinks producer, let alone a sake brewery, and we want to understand the engine behind it.

First, could you share what principles guide all of Dassai’s experimentations, and how do you decide which goals are worth such a high level of effort and investment? Besides the goal of creating a more delicious sake, what else do you see as worthy goals for Dassai?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: We do not think of production and research as separate departments. It is the production side itself that tries things out. So whenever someone has an idea, or a thought that doing something a certain way might improve the flavour, we begin by trying it as a small batch. Then we check whether it tastes good and whether there is anything in it. That is our way of working.

What makes this possible, I think, is the sheer number of times we brew each year. We currently brew three thousand times a year, so if an experiment does not come off, we can recover it with the other sake.

In practice, rather than researching and researching and only making a product once it is complete, our production members are free, within reason, to think ‘this might be interesting’ or ‘this might taste better’, and to act on it. If it comes to nothing, we do not make it again. If there is something in it, we make it once more and keep testing. That cycle repeats, and that is the environment we work in.

Making a better sake means you cannot simply repeat the same thing forever. Trying many things and failing at them, failing while keeping an eye on the possibilities, is enormously important.

[私たちは製造と研究部門というのを分けて考えていないんですね。もう製造部門がいろんなことを試していく、というふうにやってるんですよ。 ですので、いろんなことを思いついたり、こんなのをやったらお酒の味が良くなるんじゃないか、というのがあったら、まずスモールバッチでやってみる。で、それでおいしいかどうか、可能性があるかどうかを確かめてみる、ということが私たちのやり方なんです。 私たちのこれが可能になるのも、酒造りの年間の回数にあると思ってるんですが、今、1年間に3,000回お酒を造っていますんで、そういう実験をして、もしうまくいかなくても、他のお酒でリカバリーできる、というのがあるんです。 で、実際、研究して研究して、完成してから商品を造っていく、というよりは、まずはこうやったら面白いんじゃないか、とか、こうやったらおいしくなるんじゃないか、っていうのを、製造のメンバーもある程度自由に考えて実行していく。で、それがだめだったらもう造らない。可能性があったらもう1回造って試していく、っていうのを繰り返す、そんな環境にあります。 よりおいしいお酒を造るっていうことは、ずっと同じことを繰り返していくだけではだめなんで、いろんなことをやって失敗していく、こうやって可能性を見ながら失敗していくことが、すごく大事なんですよ。]

[88 Bamboo]: Where do the ideas of the production team come from? Does that come from experience, something that they might have witnessed during the production?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Take the centrifuge (遠心分離, enshin bunri) and Hayata (早田). The centrifuge came out of a piece of research reported within the sake industry – work at the Akita Research Institute of Food and Brewing (秋田県醸造試験場) that had come off well. Hayata came first from a newspaper article about machines being researched for the sterilisation of soft drinks.

Dassai Beyond (獺祭 磨き その先へ, Migaki Sono Saki e) came out of conversations with a maker of rice-polishing machines about how far the rice could actually be milled. Technican (テクニカン) was the same: we learnt of the Tōmin (凍眠) technology, the liquid-freezing technology, through conversations with another sake brewery.

And yes, ideas come from the production department as well. In the course of brewing, someone will think ‘this might be interesting’, or will look at another brewery and think ‘perhaps there is something in this’. We do not change direction wholesale all at once; when there is a small idea, we give it a small try.

[例えば、遠心分離とか、早田なんかに関しては、遠心分離は酒業界の研究報告のような、秋田県の醸造試験場で、こういう研究をしたらうまくいった、という話から来てますし、早田は最初に新聞で、ソフトドリンクの殺菌のために、そういう機械が研究されている、という記事から出たり、というものですね。 例えば、獺祭 磨き その先へなんかは、一番お米を磨くとどこまでいけるか、という、米の精米機のメーカーさんとの話の中から生まれてきましたし、テクニカンなんかも同じように、凍らせる、凍眠の技術、液体冷凍の技術がある、というのを、これは他の酒蔵さんとの話の中から見つけていきました。 そう、製造部からのアイデアというのも、やっぱり酒造りをしていく中で、ほんとにこうしたら面白いんじゃないか、とか、他の酒蔵を見て、こんなのってあるんじゃないか、っていうのを、大きく一気に方向を変えるんじゃなくって、ちょっとアイデアがあったらちょっと試してみる、というのはやっていってます。]

The premium Dassai Beyond the Beyond 2022, made with rice grown from the winning entry of the 'Beyond the Best Yamada Nishiki' project competition (Image Source: Sotheby's)

[88 Bamboo]: We are most curious about this: in all this experimentation, what has surprised you and your brewing team most, some discovery you stumbled upon that your team was never even looking for?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: That would be Dassai 23 Elegantly Tipsy (獺祭 純米大吟醸 磨き二割三分 美酔, Bisui). Bringing the alcohol down had been a standing problem for us. Our production manager, my father and I had all been at it for a long time, looking for some idea, and it was an area where nothing had worked.

Then our second-in-command in production came up with it himself: that doing it a certain way might lower the alcohol. And he tried it.

What emerged was a method of fermenting the sake with a high level of sweetness, of sugar, held in the mash, which restrains the activity of the yeast. The result was Elegantly Tipsy: a style with a clean aroma, in which the sweetness covers for the punch of flavour lost with the lower alcohol.

[それは、獺祭 純米大吟醸 磨き二割三分 美酔がありますね。美酔って、アルコールを落としたお酒を造りたい、という課題はずっと私たちの中にあって、私たちの製造部長だったり、私の父だったり、私だったりが、何かアイデアがないかって、ずっとチャレンジして、うまくいってなかった分野なんですね。 で、そんな中で、私たちの製造の、今のナンバー2のメンバーが、こんなふうにしたらアルコールを落とせるんじゃないか、っていうのを、自分で思いついて、試したんですね。 で、そうしたら、お酒の発酵中に、甘み、糖分を多く持った状態で発酵すると、酵母の動きを抑えて、酒を造る、というスタイルができてきたんですね。 で、それが結果的に、香りもきれいで、アルコールが少なくなった分の味のパンチを、甘みがカバーする、というスタイルの、エレガントリー・ティプシーに結びついたんですね。]

[88 Bamboo]: Finally in this vein, there are some charming things Dassai makes that sit just outside sake itself: Dassai Shochu (獺祭 焼酎), your first umeshu, Dassai Umeshu (獺祭 梅酒 磨き二割三分仕込み). And you have even made a daiginjo tuned to be drunk warm, such as Dassai 45 Warm Sake (獺祭 純米大吟醸 45 温め酒), against the old orthodoxy that heat kills a ginjo's aromatics. These feel like the play of a restless brewery.

Could you tell us what draws you to these experiments at the edges, and whether any of them has taught you something that fed its way back into the sake at the centre?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: There's nothing particularly unique about our process. We simply ensure that what we learn from developing one product is constantly fed back into our other products. 

[88 Bamboo]: Does Dassai have any Japanese whisky-making ambitions?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: I can't say what things will look like 20 or 30 years from now, but for now, there's nothing in particular.

“Dassai is always striving to challenge the idea that "sake belongs strictly alongside Japanese food," aiming instead to build a new culture where sake enjoys a broader place at the table with diverse cuisines. Dassai Blue serves as a symbolic expression of this exact philosophy.”

[88 Bamboo]: For all that Dassai is now a global name, it remains, at heart, a family house. On 28 September 2016 you formally took over from your father, Mr Hiroshi Sakurai, becoming President and the fourth-generation kuramoto (四代目蔵元), while he stepped up to become Chairman. Your father stays close to the work, and even relocated to Hyde Park, New York in person, in 2023, to watch over the quality of Dassai Blue (獺祭ブルー) during its opening months.

We would love to hear about the remarkable man that is your father and Chairman of Dassai Inc.: Mr Hiroshi Sakurai. He did not immediately inherit the brewery and he did not keep it as it was. He came to lead it by his own choice, and the path he took was a very difficult one. He had a vision for what Dassai could become, and made very bold decisions to take it there.

Personally, what do you admire most about Mr Hiroshi? Which of your father’s perspectives do you hold closest to your heart, whether it is in leading Dassai Inc. or in your own life as a whole?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: We often talk about how he is very nimble and quick on his feet (逃げ足の速さ, nigeashi no hayasa). He is quick to start all sorts of things, but equally quick to stop them.

And I think that comes out of what my father has done all along: trying to make something good, trying and failing, trying and failing, over and over. We were a very small brewery, and if you make an error and wait until that failure has done serious damage to the business, the company will not survive.

So my thinking is that you must take on the challenge as early as you can, but recognise a failure immediately, and then either change direction or stop – and repeat that. The company is larger now, but this remains extremely important to us, so we still place great value on stopping quickly and changing course. At the same time, I understand that as a company grows, that kind of quick change tends to become harder. I regard it as a major challenge at present, and we are trying to keep making small, quick changes.

[それは、よく、逃げ足の速さということがあるんですが、いろんなものを始めるのも速い、でもそれをやめるのも速い、ということなんです。 で、それには、やっぱりうちの父がずっと今までやってきた、いいものを造ろうとして、試して失敗して、試して失敗して、という繰り返しが影響してる、と思ってるんですね。 で、私たちはすごく小さな酒蔵でしたので、エラーをして、その失敗が大きく経営にダメージがいくところまで待つと、やっぱり会社として生き残っていけない、ということがありますので、できるだけ早く挑戦して、でも失敗をすぐに見極めて、方向を変えていくか、やめていくか、を繰り返さなきゃいけない、というふうに考えてるんですよ。 で、今、会社としては大きくなってるんですが、やっぱりここはすごく大事なんで、やってすぐやめたり、方向転換していくことを大事にしていますが、同時に会社が大きくなると、そういうクイックに変えていくのが難しくなりやすい、というのも理解していますので、今、大きな課題と思いながら、小さくクイックチェンジを進めていこうとしてますね。]

Third and fourth generation owners of Dassai Inc – Hiroshi and Kazuhiro Sakurai (Image Source: Forbes)

[88 Bamboo]: There is also the matter of the name. As we understand it, the “Blue” in Dassai Blue comes from an old Japanese saying, 青は藍より出でて藍より青し: that blue dye comes from the indigo plant yet ends up bluer than the indigo itself, the image of a student who grows to surpass the master.

What would it actually take for Dassai Blue to become the student who outshines the master?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The challenge right now is facing the reality that Dassai Blue hasn't surpassed original Dassai yet, and that there are still plenty of things that aren't going smoothly at the brewery itself–and then seeing if we can continuously make those incremental improvements.

Dassai's new US brewery in Hyde Park, New York, which produces the Dassai Blue Sake (Source: Japan Forward) 

[88 Bamboo]: What is Dassai Inc’s overall vision and plan for both Dassai in Japan and Dassai Blue in New York? What does Dassai Japan and Dassai Blue New York together symbolize to the world?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Dassai is always striving to challenge the idea that "sake belongs strictly alongside Japanese food," aiming instead to build a new culture where sake enjoys a broader place at the table with diverse cuisines. Dassai Blue serves as a symbolic expression of this exact philosophy.

[88 Bamboo]: Apart from Dassai New York, will Dassai plan to expand to any other cities of the world?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: It's the same as with whisky. While I can't completely rule it out in the distant future, it's not something on the horizon right now.

Increasing the number of breweries makes it harder to maintain close oversight, which creates real challenges when striving for ultimate quality.

[88 Bamboo]: Across these ten years, a great deal has grown under your leadership. You have carried Dassai out into the world, so that it is now enjoyed across dozens of countries; you have invested in your people, significantly increasing their pay and assembling the largest brewing team in Japan; and a whole wave of new expressions has appeared on your watch, from the low-alcohol Dassai to Dassai Beyond, and on to the bolder ventures we will talk about below.

Having also devoted your life to Dassai, and carried it into realms once unimaginable for a sake brewery, is there any particular work you found most fulfilling or most memorable, and best captures your own fingerprint in the ever-growing Dassai story?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The brewery in New York. Ten years ago neither I nor anyone in our company imagined building a sake brewery in New York. That it became possible in my generation is, I think, a fascinating thing.

Ten years ago the market itself had not caught up. Japanese sake meant hot sake, or something you drank only when you were eating Japanese food – and that has changed by degrees.

That we changed it by introducing sake around the world, and that out of it came the possibility of building such a brewery, is, I think, a substantial fingerprint of ours.

[ニューヨークの酒蔵ですね。これは、私も、うちの会社も、誰も、10年前に、ニューヨークに酒蔵を造る、というのは思ってなかった。というのが、私の代でできるようになったというのは、面白いことだと思ってますね。 例えば、これは、ほんとに10年前には、マーケットも実際追いついていない。日本のお酒って、ホット酒しかない、とか、日本酒を飲むのは日本食を食べるときしかない、というような状況から、徐々に徐々に変わってきた。それは私たちが世界中に日本酒を紹介することによって変えていった結果として、そういう酒蔵を造る、という可能性が生まれた、というのは、やっぱり大きな私たちのフィンガープリントですね。]

[88 Bamboo]: Of everything Dassai has done since you became President, few things capture the imagination quite like building an entire brewery on the other side of the world. Dassai Blue (獺祭ブルー / DASSAI BLUE), which opened in Hyde Park, New York in September 2023, is the largest sake brewery in the United States.

Of all the consumer responses to Dassai Blue, is there one that has stayed with you most?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Being a US-based brewery makes people feel a strong sense of connection and familiarity, and it is truly rewarding to see consumers happily enjoying our sake.

[88 Bamboo]: What have you come to notice about the American terroir, the American mindset and the American palate, and how has working with them felt different from brewing in Japan? What in it excites you and your team?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: As I mentioned earlier, we don't try to tailor our sake to fit American palates. Our primary goal is simply to brew the absolute best sake possible in that New York environment.

That said, differences like the water are significant. Because New York water is hard water, fermentation progresses faster than in Japan, making it more challenging to control.

[88 Bamboo]: On the other side, what have you found to be universal, the things that drinkers in both America and Japan seem to share?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: It’s about simply enjoying and taking delight in something that tastes truly delicious.

“Water plays a huge role [in sake-making]… Once lunar water is finally found, I believe that will mark our first real step towards crafting a uniquely delicious flavour that can only be made on the Moon.”

[88 Bamboo]: And then, beyond even that, there is space. With Dassai MOON – Made in Space (獺祭 MOON – 宇宙醸造), you became the first house in history to brew sake beyond the Earth: Yamada Nishiki, koji, yeast and water carried up to the ‘Kibo’ module of the International Space Station, and fermented there under a simulated lunar gravity of roughly one-sixth of Earth’s, in a brewing device developed with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Your stated horizon is nothing less than a working sake brewery on the Moon by around 2050. As you have put it, this was never ‘a case of trying it out once for the sake of publicity’.

Could you explain, in simple terms, what it is that actually makes brewing sake in microgravity so difficult? And so, what kind of work and what challenges does Dassai’s team still need to solve before a low-gravity fermentation can be coaxed into producing sake as fine, and as reliable, as the Dassai brewed here on Earth?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Fermentation under microgravity was something that "seemed theoretically possible," but no one had actually done it before. Putting it into practice was precisely the goal of this endeavour.

Because convection within the fermenting moromi (sake mash) barely occurs under microgravity–since convection is closely tied to gravity–we had to engineer a specialised system equipped with an internal agitation mechanism.

While we confirmed that fermentation is indeed possible in microgravity, conducting actual sake brewing inside the small-scale equipment on the ISS is not realistic for making meaningful quality advancements moving forward. The key challenge ahead is determining how to map out the various pathways towards eventually building a sake brewery on the Moon.

Dassai Moon- Made in Space (獺祭MOON – 宇宙醸造) was a very small batch of sake produced from sake mash fermented aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The mash was returned to Earth and pressed at Dassai's brewery in Yamaguchi, yielding just 116 ml of sake. Earlier this year, Dassai sold this single bottle for ¥110 million and donated the proceeds to space research.

[88 Bamboo]: Imagine the day you finally make a perfect Dassai Sake on the Moon. When the perfect Dassai is brewed on the Moon, how do you imagine it will taste? Do you think there would be a lunar terroir, and what might it do to the taste of a sake brewed on the moon? What style of sake do you think the people who come to make their lives on the Moon will most want to drink, given the type of lives they will lead?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: As mentioned earlier with the NY brewery, water plays a huge role. While theory suggests there is water on the Moon, it hasn't actually been discovered yet. Once lunar water is finally found, I believe that will mark our first real step towards crafting a uniquely delicious flavour that can only be made on the Moon.

Dassai Moon is Dassai Inc's project to develop techniques for brewing sake in space, with the long-term goal of producing Dassai Sake on the Moon one day (Source: Dassai)

“When an athlete wants to get better at their sport, or a Formula One driver wants to go even slightly faster, it is not only for the money. I think it is simply that they find it enjoyable, and that passion comes out of it. For our brewery in particular, we are pursuing the sake we ourselves love, the sake that moves us with how good it tastes. So there is all the more in it for the people making it.”

[88 Bamboo]: Back home, in the same Osogoe valley in Iwakuni where Dassai began, you are building a third brewery, due to open in 2028, devoted mainly to Dassai Beyond and sake finer still. As we understand it, this new brewery is designed to give your most skilled brewers complete ownership of each batch and brew an even better Dassai Beyond.

Dassai Beyond already stands among the finest sake in the world, and yet you are building a whole brewery to improve on it.
For you and the brewers who will run this new brewery, what is the essence or quality in a sake that your best brewers are seeking to achieve? Where do you look for ideas on how nihonshu could be better?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The truth is that for the people who make the sake, and for the kuramoto (蔵元), aiming at a better sake is also enjoyable.

When an athlete wants to get better at their sport, or a Formula One driver wants to go even slightly faster, it is not only for the money. I think it is simply that they find it enjoyable, and that passion comes out of it.

For our brewery in particular, we are pursuing the sake we ourselves love, the sake that moves us with how good it tastes. So there is all the more in it for the people making it. But alongside finding it enjoyable, I also think that what we do is very hard. Refining the same thing over and over, making the same thing better, means constantly having to deny yourself, and I understand that this is genuinely difficult.

In marketing terms it would be far easier to make a differently flavoured sake each time, to keep pushing out new products and stimulating the market. But in the end it is not good for the customer.

We want our customers to enjoy their drink and their food, to drink and eat for happiness. And if that is so, then drinking only one brand forever is not right either. So our customers will drink all sorts of things: wine, champagne, other sake. But within that, we want to keep making something delicious, and that is why we focus on a single kind.

And so this new brewery comes from that conviction, held all the more strongly, and from wanting to create a place where the people whose skills have caught up with it can do their best work.

[実は、酒を造るメンバーとか蔵元にとって、より良い酒を目指すってのは、楽しいことでもあるんですね。 例えば、スポーツ選手が、スポーツがうまくなりたい、とか、F1レーサーが少しでも速く走りたい、っていうのは、お金のためとかそれだけじゃなく、単にやっぱり、そこが自分たちにとって楽しい、情熱が生まれる、ということはある、と思ってるんです。 特に私たちの酒蔵にとっては、自分たちが好きなお酒、自分たちがおいしいなあと感激するお酒を、より追い求めていく、追求していく、と思ってるんで、余計にそこも、造るメンバーにとっては面白い部分もありますね。 で、実はただ、面白いと思うことというのと一緒に、私たちがやってるのはすごく辛いことだとも思ってます。 それは、やっぱり同じものを磨き抜いていく、同じものをより良くしていく、っていうことは、常に自分たちを否定しなきゃいけない、というのは、やっぱりすごく大変なことだとも理解しています。 ですんで、しかも、マーケティング的に言うと、毎回違う味のお酒を造って、どんどんどんどん新しい商品を送り出して、マーケットを刺激していったほうが、よりやりやすい。でも、それは、お客さんにとって、結果的には良くないとも思ってるんです。 私たちは、やっぱりお客さんに、アルコールとか食を楽しんで飲んでほしい、と、幸せのために飲んでほしい、食べてほしい、と思ってますし、それだったら、1つのブランドだけを飲み続けるというのは、やっぱり違う、と思ってるんです。 だから、お客さんはいろんなものを、ワインとかシャンパンとか、他の日本酒も含めて飲んでいく。でも、その中で、おいしいものっていうのを、ずっと造り続けたいんで、1種類にフォーカスしてるんです。 で、だから、この新しい酒蔵は、その思いがより強く、そこに技術も追いついてきてるメンバーに活躍する場を作りたい、ということがあるんです。]

Dassai Inc.'s new brewery would focus on producing its top-end Dassai Beyond Sake (Source: Sotheby's)

“I do think the craft sake makers’ habit of trying to do something new every single time can get in the way of pursuing quality in the product. In that sense, I think craft sake still has some weak areas.”

–Kazuhiro Sakurai, on a potential challenge faced by Japanese Craft Sake (クラフトサケ) producers

[88 Bamboo]: In an interview with Sōgyō Techō (創業手帳), you made a sobering observation: that Japanese sake reached its peak in 1974 and has been a declining industry ever since (「日本酒は昭和49年にピークを迎え…ずっと下降している業界なんです」). And yet much of Dassai’s own success has come from setting aside certain pieces of tradition that others treated as sacred: brewing without a toji, replacing secrecy with data shared openly, and being one of the first breweries to stake everything on premium junmai daiginjo made from a single rice.

Looking across the whole of sake-making, what other rules, customs or habits, whether in the way sake is made, the way it is sold and talked about, or anything else, do you think the Japanese sake industry might do well to rethink, or even let go of altogether? For instance, what are your views about producers of Japanese Craft Sake (クラフトサケ) who add ingredients or processes that are not used by conventional nihonshu makers?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: You will know the background to how craft sake (クラフトサケ, kurafuto sake) came about, but let me set it out briefly. As Japanese law stands, new licences to brew sake are not being issued to breweries. Craft sake, which uses other ingredients in order to produce alcohol, came about as a way over that obstacle.

Given that situation – and this is my personal view – rather than doing it that way, new licences should simply be issued freely. And if some breweries then go out of business as a result, that cannot really be helped. I think a situation where breweries are both entering and leaving the industry at the same time would be the healthier one.

That said, I do think the craft sake makers’ habit of trying to do something new every single time can get in the way of pursuing quality in the product. In that sense, I think craft sake still has some weak areas.

[そうですね、まず、クラフトサケが生まれた背景をご存知だと思いますけど、少し話しておくと、日本の法律では、酒蔵に新しくお酒を造る免許を下ろさない、という現状があって、その現状を乗り越えて、アルコールを造るために、他の原料を使ったクラフトサケ、っていうのが生まれてきたんです。 で、そういう状況を踏まえると、これは私個人の考えですが、そんなことをせずに、どんどん新規の免許も下ろして、で、その結果として、やめていく酒蔵もあってもしょうがない。増えていくのも減っていくのも、同時に起こっていく状況のほうが正しいんだろうと思ってます。 ただ、その上で思うんですが、クラフトサケの造り手たちが、全部、毎回毎回新しいことをしようとしていくことっていうのは、商品の品質を追求するときに、邪魔になる部分もある。その意味では、クラフトサケって、まだまだ弱い部分もある、とも思ってます。]

“There remains a tendency, perhaps particularly among Japanese people, to regard European culture as something very fine. But in truth, Japanese culture, Asian culture, European, American – it is not that any one of them is better… To create the opening for that change, we intend to keep stepping outside Japanese food, and to keep carrying our sake into markets beyond Japan.”

[88 Bamboo]: On 1 June 2025, after more than seventy years under the name Asahi Shuzo, the company formally became Dassai Inc. (株式会社獺祭). It was, we understand, a change you had turned over in your mind for the better part of a decade before finally making it.

Alongside the new name came a bold ambition: a long-term goal of 100 billion yen in sales, with the larger part of it, around 70 billion, expected to come from outside Japan, set against company-wide sales of roughly 21 billion yen today. It is an ambitious statement about where you believe Dassai truly belongs in the world.

We are keen to understand what this next chapter really asks of Dassai. What are the few things Dassai must get right for that goal to be reached, and what would getting there mean for the place of Japanese sake in the world?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: For us, 100 billion yen (1,000億円) is not actually the goal. It is the means.

Our wish is to become a presence that is properly respected around the world – respected as a brand, as a brand born out of Japanese culture, as a sake brand. To do that we need to be noticed, and I see the figure of 100 billion yen as the measure of the conditions for being noticed.

So in aiming at 100 billion yen, we have no intention of turning ourselves into a maker of all sorts of alcohol – producing large volumes of whisky, say, or ready-to-drink products (RTDs). Within that, what we need, and what we must take on, in order to go out into the world and build sales of 100 billion, is to enlarge the stage on which Japanese sake (日本酒, nihonshu) sits, and to raise it higher.

As things stand, the picture has shifted a little in Asia, but around the world the impression of sake is still very much that it is drunk hot, drunk in small amounts, and drunk only alongside Japanese food.

Consider – though I am sure you understand this already – that wine and champagne are not found only where there is French food. They are everywhere: with Asian food, with Japanese food, with American food. Customers accept them as a matter of course and enjoy them as a matter of course. Sake is not yet in that position.

And I do think there remains a tendency, perhaps particularly among Japanese people, to regard European culture as something very fine. But in truth, Japanese culture, Asian culture, European, American – it is not that any one of them is better. Each is one good thing among others, and people should enjoy the various things within them. That, I believe, is the right state of affairs.

To create the opening for that change, we intend to keep stepping outside Japanese food, and to keep carrying our sake into markets beyond Japan.

[これは私たちにとって、実際、1,000億円というのは、実は目的じゃなく手段なんですね。 私たちは、世界中にきちんとリスペクトされる存在、ブランドとして、日本の文化から生まれたブランド、日本酒のブランドとして、リスペクトされる存在になっていきたい、という願いがあるんです。 で、そのためには、やっぱり人の目につく、ということも必要ですので、人の目につく条件を測るメジャーとして、1,000億円という金額があると思ってるんです。 で、だから、1,000億円を目指すために、例えば、私たちがウイスキーとか、RTDをたくさん造る、そういう、いろんなアルコールを造るメーカーに変わっていくつもりもないんですね。 で、そんな中で、私たちが世界に出ていく、1,000億という売上を作っていくためには必要な部分、挑戦しなきゃいけない部分というのは、その、日本酒というもののステージをより大きくして、より上に高めていくことだと思ってるんです。 今、現状は、まだ、日本酒って、アジアではちょっと変わってきましたが、世界中では、まだ、ホット酒で飲む、ちょっとだけ飲むもので、日本食と一緒にしか飲まないもの、という印象が、やっぱり、まだまだ強いんですね。 で、想像してほしい、というか、これはもうお分かりだと思うんですが、ワインもシャンパンも、フランス料理のとこだけにあるわけじゃなくって、アジアの食事も、日本食も、アメリカの食事も、どこにでもある。それが、普通にお客さんが受け入れて、普通に楽しんでる、その状況が、まだ、実は日本酒にはないんですよ。 で、実際に、これは、やっぱり、まだまだ、特に日本の人にとってかもしれませんが、ヨーロッパの文化というのが、すごくいいもの、というふうに思うように、どうしてもなってる、ということがある、と思ってるんです。 でも、本当は、日本のカルチャーも、アジアのカルチャーも、ヨーロッパもアメリカも、どれがいいというわけじゃなく、どれも1つのいいもので、その中のいろんなものを人は楽しんでいく、その状況が正しいと思ってるんですよ。 そういう環境に変えていくきっかけを作るために、私たちは日本食以外にも踏み出していく、日本以外のマーケットにもお酒を伝えていく、ということを、繰り返していこうと思ってるんです。]

Dassai found a kindred spirit in Michelin-starred French chef Joel Robuchon, who validated Dassai's thesis that Japanese sake could be paired with international cuisine. Their engagement and collaboration helped usher Dassai into the fine culinary world of the West. (Image Source: Forbes)

“We are told almost daily that Dassai has lost its scarcity value and is therefore harder to sell… But while a rare sake, one you can seldom get hold of, is a great happiness for the trade and for the enthusiast, for the ordinary drinker a sake you cannot get hold of is, in the end, not something that brings happiness.”

[88 Bamboo]: If Dassai is looking to make everyone in the world appreciate sake, what then is the definition of a good sake? Do the features of a “good sake” adapt to the local culture – whether in Asia or Europe?

And what would guide you in deciding what is a good sake in another culture?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: People often say to us: you have built a brewery in America, so you must be researching the market and marketing to American tastes in order to produce a delicious sake, a ‘good sake’, for them. In fact that is not what we are doing.

The reason is that, ultimately, we are not Americans, and still less are we New Yorkers. At the core of it we are people who do not know that place, so if we set out to construct a flavour for them, there is a high chance that what we end up with is not the flavour they actually want.

What we are doing instead is making, in the environment that is New York, the sake that we ourselves find delicious. But as we communicate with people there, our own senses shift little by little, and my hope is that in five or ten years, or beyond, the sake they consider good will emerge out of that.

It is the same for other countries, where we are not building breweries. We have people in Singapore, in Europe, in China, all sorts of people drinking our sake, and as we exchange with them our own senses, and our own picture of what a delicious sake is, gradually change. In the end, I believe, that is what makes a sake people in many countries can enjoy.

[よく、アメリカで私たちが酒蔵を造って、アメリカの人に合わせてマーケットをリサーチして、マーケティングして、おいしい酒、good sakeを生み出そうとしてるんでしょ、って言われるんですが、実際にはそうじゃないですね。 それは、最終的には私たちはアメリカ人じゃないし、もっと言うと、ニューヨーカーじゃない。それは、やっぱり芯のところで、そこを知らない人間なんで、私たちが味を造ろうとしても、それは結果的に、本当に彼らが求めてる味じゃない可能性が高いからなんです。 だから、私たちがやってるのは、ニューヨークという環境の中で造れる、自分たちがおいしいと思う酒を造って、ただし、それを現地の人とコミュニケーションを取ってる中で、私たちの感覚がちょっとずつ変わってきて、5年とか10年とか、その先に、彼らが思ういい酒が生まれてくることを期待してるんです。 これは他の国に関しても同じで、酒蔵は造らないんですが、シンガポールの人、ヨーロッパの人、中国の人、いろんな人たちに私たちのお酒を飲んでもらって、私たちも交流していく中で、徐々に私たちの感覚とか、おいしいと思うお酒のイメージが変わってくる。で、結果的に、いろんな国の人に楽しんでもらうお酒になると思ってます。]

[88 Bamboo]: There is one interesting gesture from your early years as President that we keep coming back to. On 10 December 2017, you took out a full-page advertisement in the Yomiuri Shimbun (読売新聞) carrying an unusual message: “Please do not buy our sake at inflated prices” (「お願いです。高く買わないでください。」)

Dassai had become so sought-after that others were reselling it well above the price you intended, and rather than let that stand, you pointed drinkers towards the proper retailers and simply asked them not to overpay.

What were you trying to protect with that advertisement, and what does it tell us about who you believe good sake is for, and the relationship you hope Dassai will always keep with the people who drink it?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: I understand perfectly well that our making sake in large volumes has its bad side for distribution – for the sake shops and the distributors. And not only for them: it is not a good thing either for the people who pursue sake as connoisseurs.

We are told almost daily that Dassai has lost its scarcity value and is therefore harder to sell, or that the flavour has slipped because we make so much of it. That is hard to take. But while a rare sake, one you can seldom get hold of, is a great happiness for the trade and for the enthusiast, for the ordinary drinker a sake you cannot get hold of is, in the end, not something that brings happiness.

And what we wanted to protect with that advertisement was exactly that: an environment in which ordinary people can buy sake happily and normally, and can enjoy it.

[私たちがお酒の量をたくさん造っていこう、というのは、実際には流通、酒屋さんだったり、ディストリビューターとかにとって、悪い部分もある。これは流通とか酒屋さんだけじゃなくて、酒をマニアックに追求する人たちにとっても、いいことじゃない、というのはよく分かっています。 よく私たちも、毎日のように、獺祭っていうのは、希少価値がなくなったから売れにくいとか、たくさん造って味が落ちた、という話を言われる。それはやっぱり精神的にはつらいことですよね。 ただ、流通とか、酒のマニアな人にとっては、希少価値のある、めったに飲めないお酒っていうのは、すごく幸せなことなんだけど、一般にお酒を飲む人にとっては、やっぱり飲めないお酒っていうのは、結果的に幸せになれない、というものだと思ってるんです。 で、私たちがこの広告で守りたかったのは、そういう普通の人たちが幸せに、普通にお酒を買うという環境、お酒を楽しんでくれるという環境だったんです。]

In 2017, Dassai took out an unprecedented full-page advertisement headlined with the bold plea, "Please do not buy our sake at inflated prices" to combat price gouging by unauthorised resellers.

[88 Bamboo]: If you had to select a Dassai product that would best represent the journey and story of Kazuhiro Sakurai-san, what would it be, and why?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: Dassai 23. This is because it is the sake that most prominently brings out the defining characteristics of Dassai: "continuous evolution" and "purity of flavour and aroma."

[88 Bamboo]: As we near the end, we turn from Dassai the brand to you, the person behind it. You have spoken of the things you learned by watching your father: the readiness to step back quickly when something is not working, the honesty to call a failure a failure, and a genuine, open curiosity about the world.

In that same reflective spirit, we would like to ask: what is the best piece of advice you have ever received, and what are the words you live by?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The message I have taken most to heart is that things not working, not succeeding, is the normal state of affairs.

And it is precisely because I feel that way that one has to doubt everything constantly, and to hold on to the need to keep changing.

The other part of it is this: failing is of course painful, both for the person and for the company. But if you set ‘it will not work’ as your very first premise, then when it does not work, your mind is a little spared.

If I were to add one last thing to that message, it is that to keep moving forward through failure and through things not working, you have to love what you do. And that connects to the effort of coming to love our own brand, and our own sake, all the more.

[うまくいかない、成功しないことが当たり前、ということが、やっぱり大きなメッセージとして受け取っています。 そういうふうに感じてるからこそ、常にいろんなものを疑わなきゃいけないし、変えていく必要性を常に持つ、ということはあります。 で、もう1つは、当然うまくいかない、失敗したっていうのは、本人にとっても会社にとってもつらいことなんですが、うまくいかないということを、一番最初のベースに据えてると、うまくいかないときに、やっぱり少し心が救われるんですね。 で、最後にこのメッセージに1つ付け加えるとしたら、失敗する、うまくいかない、というものを前に進めていくためには、好きじゃなきゃいけない、というのがあって、やっぱりそれは自分たちのブランド、とか、自分たちのお酒をより好きになる努力にもつながっていますね。]

[88 Bamboo]: To close on a lighter note: when the working day is done and you are not drinking Dassai, what do you reach for? Is there another drink, perhaps a wine, a beer, a whisky, or something else altogether, that you love to unwind with?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: I really do love Dassai, so eighty or ninety per cent of what I drink is Dassai. Some of that is work, but even privately a great deal of my drinking time is spent with Dassai. That is the starting point.

Beyond that, I will drink more or less anything that takes my interest. Yesterday, for instance, I was on my own reading a book, and after a Dassai I had a beer, and then took my time over a little whisky on the rocks.

Outside Dassai there is no one drink I am especially devoted to, no plan to master wine or anything of that sort. Choosing according to the mood of the moment, without thinking about it too much, is, I think, the secret to relaxing.

[ほんとに、獺祭が好きなんで、8割、9割は獺祭を飲んでる。仕事の面もあるし、プライベートでも獺祭を飲んでる時間が多いのは、まず前提としてあるんですね。 その上で、気になるものは結構何でも飲みますんで、昨日は、私1人で本を読みながら、獺祭を飲んだ後に、ビールを飲んで、ちょっとウイスキーをロックで、ゆっくり飲んでましたけどね。 だから、もう1つが、獺祭以外は、どれか1つがすごい好き、とか、もうワインを極めよう、とかじゃなくって、本当にそのときの気分に合わせて、あんまり考えずに選ぶ、というのが、リラックスする秘訣かなと思ってます。]

[88 Bamboo]: Could you share with us which whisky or beer you recently enjoyed?

[Kazuhiro Sakurai]: The beer, I am fairly sure, was Kirin’s Summer Limited Edition. As for the whisky, I started with Suntory Kakubin (サントリー角瓶) and then had a little Laphroaig afterwards.

[ビールは、確かね、キリンビールの夏限定のビールだったと思います。 で、ウイスキーは、最初、サントリーの角瓶を飲んで、そのあとちょっとラフロイグを飲みましたね。]

[88 Bamboo]: Thank you once again, Kazuhiro-san and his team for doing this interview with us! It has been a wonderfully insightful interview. We’re really privileged to share with our readers our conversation with the world's most celebrated sake maker!

@CharsiuCharlie