A Short History of Japanese Whisky

From a single distillery built in 1923 to a worldwide boom — how Japanese whisky grew up.

Commercial whisky making in Japan begins with one decision: in 1923, Shinjiro Torii, founder of the drinks company that became Suntory, built the Yamazaki distillery in the valley between Osaka and Kyoto — a place chosen for its water and its humid, misty climate. To run it he hired Masataka Taketsuru, a young chemist who had studied whisky making in Scotland and apprenticed at distilleries there.

Taketsuru later struck out on his own. In 1934 he founded the company that became Nikka and built the Yoichi distillery in Hokkaido, whose cool climate and peat fires were the closest thing in Japan to the Scottish Highlands he had learned in. The friendly rivalry between the two houses — Suntory and Nikka — still structures the industry today.

For most of the twentieth century, Japanese whisky was a domestic drink, blended for Japanese tastes and seldom exported. Domestic demand peaked in the early 1980s and then fell away for two decades; distilleries mothballed stills, and in 2000 the Karuizawa distillery — whose casks would later become legendary — stopped distilling altogether.

The turn came from outside. In the 2000s and 2010s, Japanese single malts began winning the top prizes at international competitions, and in 2014 a Yamazaki single cask was named the best whisky in the world by a leading whisky guide. Demand exploded faster than maturing stock could follow: age-statement whiskies grew scarce, prices climbed, and the world started beating a path to the distilleries themselves.

At the same time, a craft wave began. In 2008 the Chichibu distillery became the first entirely new whisky distillery licensed in Japan in 35 years. Its success showed that sake and shochu makers — and complete newcomers — could enter the field, and through the 2010s and 2020s new distilleries opened across the country, from Akkeshi in eastern Hokkaido to new stills in Kagoshima and Okinawa. This guide follows that whole map: the famous names, the revived veterans, and the small new distilleries in between.