JAPANESE WHISKY HISTORY

Japanese whisky history starts with the figure of Shinjiro Torii, a young man with the desire of making whisky in his motherland:

... and he certainly did fulfil his ambition when founding Suntory, which later became a drinks conglomerate, but everyone starts from somewhere.
Torii’s first steps date back to 1899 when he opened a wine shop in Osaka.
In 1924 he established Yamazaki, Japan’s first malt whisky distillery, located near Kyoto.
Torii wasn’t the only one having great ambitions: Yamazaki’s first distillery manager, Masakata Taketsuru, was a man with big dreams too.
Taketsuru trained as a chemist and was employed by Settsu Shuzo.
This company intended to produce Japanese whisky and sent Taketsuru to Glasgow University in 1919 to study whisky production and he learned even more at Longmorn in Speyside and Hazelburn distillery in Campbelltown.
He returned to Japan in 1920, waiting for the whisky production to materialise at Settsu Shuzo, but this never happened. The company was declared bankrupt and Taketsuru lost his job. It was after these events that he joined Yamazaki.

In 1929 Yamazaki produced Japan’s first malt whisky, Shirofuda (White Label, now called Suntory White).
Taketsuru then decided to set up his own distillery, trying to create a reminiscence of Scotland, and settled on Yoichi, a town in the north of Japan.
It was in 1934 that he created Hokkaido Distillery: its building was made of stone with pagoda roofs and became operational in 1936.
Taketsuru and Torii continued to shape the Japanese whisky industry through the years.
In 1937, Torii launched the first blend, Suntory Whisky Kakubin, aged 12 years; in 1946 he launched Torys and Suntory Old in 1950.
In the 1950’s Taketsuru company became known as Nikka Whisky and in 1969 he founded Miyagikyo, another distillery located in Sendai, in the northern part of Japan’s main island, Honshu.
Following his father’s steps, Keizo Saji, Shinjiro Torii’s son, opened a grain whisky distillery called Chita in 1972 and a second one in 1973, called Hakushu.
The same year a new distillery was established: Fuji Gotemba, a whisky distillery by Kirin-Seagram (a Japan-USA joint venture).

The 80’s-90’s was a dynamic period for the Japanese whisky industry since new malt whiskies were launched and new distilleries were founded.
In 1984 Suntory launched Yamazaki single malt. In 1989, in occasion of its 90th anniversary Suntory created Hibiki (meaning “Harmony”), a blend of malt and grain whiskies from three distilleries, Yamazaki, Hakushu and Chita, aged in five cask types, including Japanese oak mizunara..
Nikka established another distillery in 1998 distilling grain whisky at Miyagikyo.
In the meantime Karuizawa, Japan’s smallest distillery, ceased production in 2000. Its whisky had always been in limited supply, which made it even more limited after the closure and helped increase Karuizawa to cult status.
2005 was the year of confirmation for Japanese whisky, when Yamazaki released a 50-year-old malt whisky aged in Japanese oak casks.
Japanese whisky continues to generate a dedicated following, receiving numerous awards and achieving extremely high prices at auctions.