Sho-chu Time / Shochu Makers Tie Up With Famous Characters to Attract Fans; Labels Feature Manga, Tokusatsu Heroes and Monsters

By Ko Yokomine / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

7:00 JST, January 16, 2025

Kagoshima Prefecture is one of the nation’s major production areas of shochu. This is the fourth in a series introducing the charm of the distilled spirit and the people involved in its creation.

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IBUSUKI, Kagoshima — Makers of shochu in Kagoshima Prefecture are using various methods to attract new people to the distilled liquor, including tie-ups with popular manga, animation and tokusatsu special effects productions.

Maker Ibusuki Sake Brewery Co. in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, began selling a special edition of Riemon, its shochu made from sweet potatoes, in December with labels featuring characters from the manga “Kinnikuman” and scenes featuring the eponymous hero.

The idea came from Naoyuki Koike, the president of Hikidashi Inc., a Tokyo-based company that plans and sells licensed products. When Koike visited Ibusuki as a tourist, he was moved by the rich nature and the warmth of the local residents, and suggested the idea to the shochu maker.

Two products with “Kinnikuman” labels are available. The label on one shows a steam sand bath, a famous tourist attraction in Ibusuki, instead of the “sand hell” depicted in the manga. The other product’s label modifies a frame from the manga in which a character exclaims, “I saw Nessie!” The label changes Nessie to Issy, an unidentified giant creature that people often claimed to see in Lake Ikeda in the city in the 1970s.

Koike said: “I wanted the designs to quickly convey where the shochu was made.”

Managing director Noriharu Kamisako watched “Kinnikuman” as a child. “I hope this shochu will encourage people to visit Ibusuki,” Kamisako said.

Yeast and koji mold are essential for shochu production. Some yeast and koji were stored aboard the space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station for 16 days from May to June 2011. Kami-shuzo, a shochu maker in Izumi in the prefecture, uses yeast and koji cultivated from that space-traveled yeast and koji for some of its products.

To stress this special feature, the company has been selling sweet potato shochu with labels bearing images of popular monsters, such as the space dinosaur Zetton and the space ninja Baltan, since 2014. Both are enemies of the tokusatsu hero Ultraman.

Since 2019, the company has also been selling products with labels depicting Godzilla and King Ghidorah, which are popular monsters from Toho Co.

Kami-shuzo is selective about the ingredients it uses. For the Baltan shochu, purple sweet potatoes link the mysterious atmosphere of the color purple with the monster, which can magically create copies of itself. Red sweet potatoes are used for the shochu featuring the monster Red King.

Mayumi Dowaki of Kami-shuzo was involved in planning the products. “We wanted to create products that not only taste good but are also more enjoyable for people who know the featured monsters,” Dowaki said.

Company President Kosuke Kami said: “These products made in collaboration with high-profile works are accessible to people who aren’t familiar with shochu. Our company will continue to provide opportunities for people to become interested in shochu.”

You can read this article in Japanese here.