Japanese Whisky: The Man Who Carried Scotland Home
Every great whisky category starts with a person, and Japanese whisky starts with Masataka Taketsuru.
A One-Way Ticket to Scotland
In 1918, a young Japanese man boarded a ship with a single mission: to learn how genuine whisky was made. Taketsuru enrolled in chemistry at the University of Glasgow — becoming the first Japanese person to formally study the craft of whisky-making — and then went where the real education was: the distilleries.
His apprenticeship reads like a whisky pilgrimage. A five-day crash course in distillation at Longmorn in Speyside. Grain distillation studies at Bo'ness. Five months at Hazelburn in Campbeltown. Everything he saw, he wrote down — detailed notebooks that would later become Japan's first whisky production guide.
Scotland gave him one more thing: his wife, Rita. In 1920 they returned to Japan together, carrying the secrets of Scotch whisky across the world.
Yamazaki: Japan's First Genuine Whisky
The homecoming wasn't smooth. The company that had funded Taketsuru's education abandoned its whisky plans, and for a while his notebooks sat waiting. Then in 1923, Kotobukiya — the company we know today as Suntory — hired him to build the Yamazaki Distillery, where he produced Japan's first genuine whisky.
Yoichi: A Piece of Scotland in Hokkaido
When his contract with Kotobukiya ended, Taketsuru went north — far north. In 1934 he established his own distillery in Yoichi, Hokkaido, choosing the site because its cool, maritime climate reminded him of Scotland. The first pot still he designed in Japan was installed in 1936, and in 1940 the first whisky was launched under the name NIKKA WHISKY.
Here's a detail I love: Nikka comes from "Nippon Kaju" — the Great Japanese Juice Company. While the whisky slept in casks, Taketsuru's venture survived by making apple juice.
Did You Know?
Taketsuru's Yoichi venture literally began as an apple juice company — whisky takes years to mature, and juice paid the bills.
Suntory's vast Hakushu distillery once produced around 30 million litres of spirit a year from two huge stillhouses — at the time, the largest plant of its kind in the world.
Japan's whisky makers, unlike Scotland's, traditionally don't exchange stocks with each other — so each house became fully self-sufficient, building its own range of styles under one roof.
What Counts as "Japanese Whisky"? The 2021 Law
For decades, the category's success created a problem: some products labelled "Japanese whisky" were built on imported foreign whisky. The Japan Spirits & Liqueur Association responded by defining the category properly. The standards took effect on April 1, 2021, with transitional labelling permitted until March 31, 2024 for products labelled before the rules came in.
For drinkers, this matters: a bottle that meets the JSLA standards is genuinely fermented, distilled, and matured in Japan. A century after Taketsuru's notebooks came home, Japanese whisky finally has its own written identity.
Why This Story Matters in Your Glass
When you taste a Yoichi single malt — or catch the sandalwood-and-incense signature of mizunara oak in a Japanese blend — you're tasting a craft that travelled from Speyside and Campbeltown to Hokkaido in one man's notebooks. It was inspired by Scotch, but a hundred years of independence made it something entirely its own.
Curious how Japanese technique compares with the Scottish original? Start with my notes on Longmorn 18 — the very distillery where Taketsuru took his first crash course — and join the Around The Glass Society for more stories like this one.
