Our Beliefs

Is it an asset-building business that respects the makers?

The leading role in sake belongs to the makers who work with the rice and water of their land. Our job is not to stand in front in their place, but to shape, from outside the brewery, an environment where they can focus on brewing.

That is why we do not take on business that ends as a one-off buzz. The question we ask is what remains at the brewery once the work is done, and whether its value grows over time. We call this asset-building work. The value of a brand, new places to sell, ties with drinkers and liquor retailers, and a management foundation that can be handed to the next generation. The starting point for every business is whether it becomes an asset that builds up in the brewery and its region, rather than something consumed once.

Wakate no Yoake began in 2007 as a sake event that brewers ran themselves, and camo took it over and relaunched it. We are in a position to inherit what makers have built over many years and to expand it with a fresh perspective. In business succession too, we entrust rice growing, brewing and community building to the makers, while we take on the work outside the brewery, such as branding, sales, exports and administration. Our respect for the makers is built into that division of roles.

Is it a structural approach that grows the size of the market?

In a shrinking market, one brewery's win tends to be another's loss. The whole industry then wears itself down and heads toward mutual ruin. What we aim for is not to fight over a limited pie, but to make the pie itself bigger.

So we focus on acting on the structure of the market, rather than stopping at a single event or product. We create large events such as Wakate no Yoake and Konsai as places to meet that first glass. We create places to buy along the paths of daily life, so that people who have discovered sake can pick it up in their everyday lives. And on the systems that underpin the industry, such as the licensing system, exports and geographical indications, we hold ongoing dialogue in open forums like the SAKE LEADERS SUMMIT and turn it into policy proposals. Encounters, everyday life and systems: we believe the market grows from its structure only when all three layers move at the same time.

Noto Sake Support, in which breweries across Japan stood behind the earthquake-hit breweries of Noto through joint brewing, was born from the same idea. Rather than completing everything within one company, we bring together the strength of the industry to keep brewing going when it was about to stop. A structural approach also means designing systems of mutual benefit like this.

Is it grounded in a global view and a long-term perspective?

If we accept that the domestic market is shrinking, the future of sake lies in its relationship with the world. Our two wheels are building brands in Japan and creating growth overseas. We have held sakejump in Hong Kong, Beijing, Berlin and London, pairing sake with local food and culture. By delivering sake not as a mere export but together with food culture and experiences, we are adding new drinkers around the world.

And our yardstick is not quarters or a few years, but generations. In an industry where a hundred-year-old brewery is still called young, what we must think about is whether brewing will still be going on in each place decades, even centuries, from now. Creating stages where young makers can step out into the world, and creating forms of management that the next generation will want to inherit. We choose systems that last over the results in front of us.