Message from the CEO

Open reciprocity

Brewers' associations and breweries, breweries and liquor retailers, breweries and their regions, brewery and brewery. What has sustained sake as a culture, a tradition and an industry is not closed transactions settled in money, but "open reciprocity", in which what each of us offers ripples out into the wider community of the region and the industry.

I use the word currency, but this is not about money. It is a feeling deeper in the heart, one that even those who hold it find hard to put into words. Rather than a system someone designed, this industry has stood on an awareness that the people involved have shared without ever quite noticing it.

No structural reform without a bigger pie

However rational a system or initiative may look, as long as it serves the gain of a single company, it will struggle to win the industry's support. The licensing system, the foundations for export, business succession: none of these is solved by one company pulling ahead.

In business succession, too, simply increasing the number of matches is not enough. What do you redesign afterwards, who do you team up with, and in what order do you rebuild? If management after succession is not open to the region and the industry, it ends with nothing more than a license and a building changing hands.

If we cannot share a direction of growing the pie for the whole industry, we will only wear each other down in a shrinking market. That is mutual ruin, and I see it as a systemic risk for the industry.

Trust becomes credibility through results

Saving a traditional industry, branding that pays off. Many people come in from outside with words like these, and on the brewery side, a sense of "here we go again" has built up. Breweries now tell me, laughing, that this is exactly how they saw me when I first started going around and reaching out to breweries across the country.

Trust turns into credibility through results. Credibility, once damaged, takes years to win back, and trust can only be built on top of it. And this thing deep in the heart sometimes works beyond reason. Untangling conflicts with data matters, but data alone cannot reach this realm.

Heroes who embody reciprocity

At the same time, an industry needs star players for people to look up to. It is wonderful when young people appear who say they joined this industry because they admired someone. A culture that emotionally cannot accept standout individuals, and an industry that needs standout individuals. I believe these two do not contradict each other.

The people celebrated in this industry are, more than those with standout results, those who bring reciprocity to it. When someone's success is visibly rippling out to liquor retailers, to the region and to those who come after, established players move past envy and gladly support and back them.

Putting into words what is hard to put into words, breaking down each other's fears, and confirming what we each want to protect. Not sparing that effort, and preparing the ground for support to grow through both systems and attitude. That, I think, is the substance of building consensus in this industry.

Mutual prosperity

This is not about "everyone just getting along". When we do something, it should serve not only ourselves but the culture and industry of sake as a whole. Whether we can hold this view of mutual prosperity, jita kyoei, decides whether an effort succeeds or fails. I would even say that without it, there can be no revival of this industry.

It is not only relationships that should be open, but words as well. As alcohol consumption shrinks worldwide, I want to retell, from outside perspectives such as the tea ceremony, food culture and the landscapes of each region, what it means that sake has stayed by people's side for hundreds, even thousands, of years.

camo will continue, as one member of this open reciprocity, to work for the passing on of culture and the growth of the industry.