Stephen Lyman - The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks: Sake, Shochu, Japanese Whisky, Beer, Wine, Cocktails and Other Beverages

Hibiya Bar Whisky-S, Tokyo, see .

Woodblock print of woman drinking sake, by Kitagawa Utamaro, c. 1802.

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO

JAPANESE DRINKS

Sake, Shochu, Japanese Whisky, Beer, Wine, Cocktails and Other Beverages

STEPHEN LYMAN and CHRIS BUNTING

Customer and bartender in Tokyo sake bar Akaboshi to Kumagai, see .

Preface

by Chris Bunting

Why are an Englishman and an American writing a book about Japanese alcohol traditions? Probably for the same reason that Lafcadio Hearn (aka Koizumi Yakumo), an Irishman born in Greece who lived in Chicago, was first to write down the oral traditions of Japanese fables. Westerners have been curious about Japan since we first encountered this inscrutable island whose fully formed civil society had developed completely without Western influences.

My previous book, Drinking Japan,was written on the premise that Japan is the best place to drink alcohol in the world; I spent nearly 300 pages making that case, complete with bar recommendations. Drinking Japanwas published just 30 days after the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster had taken nearly 20,000 lives on the eastern coast of Honshu, Japans main island, and we donated a portion of the proceeds from the book to disaster relief. The disaster hurt the nation badly: international tourism to Japan declined by nearly 30 percent that year.

Drinking Japangained a worldwide readership. I started to receive Twitter messages and emails from one Stephen Lyman, a New Yorker who was fast becoming one of the foremost Western experts on traditional Japanese shochu and Okinawan awamori. He was pestering me for an update to the guide, and while I agreed that one was needed, the world had changed. And I had, as well: shortly after the publication of Drinking Japan, I found myself back in the UK with my family, no longer a denizen of Tokyos drinking districts. Not easily dissuaded, Stephen continued to correspond with me periodically for several years before we hit on the idea of doing a new drinks guide together. This entire collaboration has occurred onlinewe met in person just once, for about 24 hours in the spring of 2018, when Stephen visited me in the north of England for food, drink and conversation.

In creating this book, we decided that, rather than guide readers through drinking establishments in Japan, wed guide them through Japanese alcohol traditions and leave it to them where theyd like to drink. As such, the premise of the volume you hold in your hands is, You dont need to go to Japan to enjoy Japans incredible drinking culture. Japanese Drinksis the result. We hope you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Kanpai!

Chris Bunting

Ilkley, United Kingdom

A shochu brewer at work.

JAPANS RICH DRINKING CULTURE

Kanpai!is translated as cheers! and literally means empty your glass.

Right Tokyo salarymen enjoy an after-work drink.

In nearly every major city in the world you can now find some of the finest examples of Japanese sake, whisky, beer, umeshu plum liqueur, shochu and awamori; occasionally youll even stumble upon some surprisingly good Japanese wine. Youre also very likely to find a cocktail bar staffed by talented Japanese bartenders serving cocktails that have been very much influenced by Japans emergence as one of the finest cocktail cultures in the world.

Since the average Japanese restaurant overseas may carry only a few kinds of sake, one or two brands of shochu or umeshu, and some mass-produced Japanese beer, it may be hard to conceive that there are more than 2,000 active breweries and distilleries producing more than 20,000 unique products in a country whose land area is roughly equivalent to Germany in the European Union, or Montana in the United States.