Iichiko

A previous post on last year’s disappointing shōchū sales piqued my interest anew in Iichiko, Japan’s largest shōchū distillery in terms of revenue and producer of the best-selling Iichiko mugi (barley) jōchū. As I mentioned before, I had never tried their mugi jōchū, but was familiar with the Ichiko brand as the company has for many, many years run an advertising campaign with large posters featuring a bottle of their shōchū, sometimes hidden like Waldo, in a variety of outdoor settings.

I’m not sure what the message of the ads is supposed to be, but I’ll admit they do make an impression. That said, I have never once looked at the poster and thought, “I wouldn’t mind give that stuff a try.” 

The article in the Keizai Shimbun (see below), however, changed all that. "Best-selling mugi jōchū? Surely, a million-plus consumers can't be wrong."

Well, last week when I was barhopping (梯子酒, hashigo zaké) with some friends I got sozzled enough to finally give Iichiko a try. I'd drunk just about everything else on the menu, what the Japanese call champon-ing (ちゃんぽん, champon), and figured a glass of mugi jōchū wouldn't kill me.

Boy, I wish I hadn’t.

Iichiko’s catch phrase, “The Napoleon (as in the brandy) of the Working Class Neighborhood” (下町のナポレオン Shitamachi no Naporeon), should have been fair warning.

My first sip of the shōchū evoked an unusual reaction from me—the very same one I often witness in others when they have just tried the firewater I happened to be drinking: “Wah!”

Mugi jōchū is supposed to be one of the more drinkable varieties of shōchū, but this Iichiko had the zingy palate of paint thinner. Surely, a million-plus consumers didn’t know shit from Shinola.

いいちこ

Iichiko Mugi Jōchū

Kampai?

いいちこむぎ焼酎 (Iichiko Mugi Jōchū)

25% Alc/Vol

Rate: ★

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This is the original article I quoted from. When new data is released later this month, I will report it here.

Teikoku Databank released the results of their annual survey of the shōchū market August 12th, reporting that the top fifty shōchū and awamori makers had gross sales of ¥298.1 billion in 2010, a drop of 2.5% over the previous year. This is the second consecutive yearly decline--sales fell 1.1% in 2009. Reasons for the drop include a slump in consumer demand and the recent popularity of highballs. (I am guilty of this. I never enjoyed drinking whiskey until Suntory released it Kaku Haibōru which I drink like soda now. Hic!)

The gross sales of the top fifty shōchū and awamori producers was studied from January to December of 2010. Forty-six of the companies are based in the Kyūshū-Okinawa region.

Of the fifty companies, roughly sixty percent, or 29 companies, showed a drop in sales. The firm with the greatest sales, mugi jōchū maker, Iichiko, based in Usa City, Ōita Prefecture, saw a decrease of 4.9% in sales. (I have long been familiar with Iichiko from their ad campaign--every month they pin up large posters at train stations like the one at the top of this post--but I have never once tried their mugi jōchū. High time I did.) Four of the top five companies all experienced a reduction in revenue. Only second placed Kirishima Shuzō of Miyakonojô City in Miyazaki Prefecture enjoyed a 10.4% increase in sales. (Kuro Kiri, as everyone calls it, is okay. Not the best shōchū in the world, but not the worst either.)

A leading force in the imo (potato) jōchū market with Kirishima Black (黒霧島) at the center, its sales have continued to grow. The company has placed second in gross sales for eight years running. The Kirishima Black brand is well known in metropolitan areas and has maintained steady growth.

Among awamori makers, Kumejima’s Kumesen has enjoyed a 7.4% increase in sales, coming in 19th, up four places from 2009. On the other hand, Higa Shuzō of Yomitan City, Okinawa Prefecture, which produces Zampa brand awamori, has seen their sales slip 13.6%. (Kumesen is much better than Zampa--full stop. It's no mystery that one distillery's sales have gone up while the other's has suffered.)

As consumers continue to turn to cheaper products (more on this in a later post), competition among shōchū producers has intensified. With the popularity of the comparatively inexpensive highball, Suntory Holdings has seen sales of whiskey increase 17%. It can be said that some of the demand for shōchū has been “drunken” by thirst for highballs. (This pun works better in the Japanese.)

From the Nikkei Shimbun

Hita Zen Koji

It happened again, that useless intuition of mine.

For no particular reason, I started thinking about my friend Mika. I hadn’t seen in well over a year and wondered aloud one evening whether she was still running her children’s clothing boutique. She had given birth to a second child—a boy—about a year earlier, so I had my doubts. I decided then that I would try and take my son there after visiting Ajibi [1] and told my wife so. Well, as luck would have it, Mika called me up the very next day to say that she was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop by.

“By all means, do come over!”

Mika and I used to be drinking buddies, and for a few years running we were getting together about once or twice a week. She was a core member of a nebulous group of boozers and diners, mostly Japanese women, with whom I would go out for dinner or drinks or to parties. As is often the case with groups like that, unfortunately, it seldom lasts. Transfers, marriages, pregnancies, all have a way of chipping away at the camaraderie. And in the case of that particular group, two women were transferred away, and Mika got knocked-up and eventually married. It was just as well: by the time I turned forty I was spending less and less time in clubs and bars and more time sitting in cafés writing.

“I’ve gotten divorced,” Mika told me as soon as she entered my front door. She had both children with her.

“Um, congratulations?”

I wasn’t surprised. The only reason my friend had gotten married in the first place was the first pregnancy; the only reason she hadn’t already divorced was the second.

“We’re still together. Living together, that is.”

“Oh?”

“Until I can save up enough money for a deposit on an apartment.”[2]

“I see.”

Mika put her ten-month-old son down on the floor. The kid looked like he would one day have a promising career in the sport of sumô wrestling. “I still control all of his money,” she said.

“How about your shop?”

“I closed it after I got pregnant with him.” Her son sat up and smiled at me, flashing me four new teeth. “He was a ‘mistake’.”

“Cute ‘mistake’,” I said, picking him up. “Heavy, too!”

“Yeah.”

Mika went into my kitchen and started to fix her son a large bottle of formula. As she was heating up some water, she told me that her son had been easy to bring up, much easier than her daughter.

“It’s often the opposite,” I said. My poor wife has had to contend with raising two very active boys.

We wouldn’t mind also having a daughter, but the odds of my loins producing another feral laddie are, well . . . why play with fire, right?

. . .

About two months ago in one of my writing classes, a student wrote in her diary that she had recently “found” her father on Facebook. When I asked her about it, she told me that her parents had divorced when she was just a toddler. She had never met her father since then. Thanks to Facebook, though, she and her father not only “friended” each other, but were going to be reunited in a few days. I asked her if she had told her mother and she answered, no, it was a secret. Her mother had apparently remarried while she was still very young.

It’s not unusual in Japan for couples who divorce to completely sever ties with each other after breaking up. I even know of one couple who had two children—a boy and a girl. When they divorced, they decided that it would be “best” if their daughter stayed with her mother, and the son go on to live with his father.

“And the two have never met since they were young children?” I asked.

“No, never. Not even once.”

Never mind the possibilities for an intriguing Oedipal tale of siblings reuniting by chance and having an incestuous relationship, this struck me as just plain wrong on so many levels.

My own children keep me up most nights, crying and screaming and kicking and even pinching me. The apartment, which I prefer to keep neat and tidy, is usually a mess now, toys and picture books and used diapers are all over the place. Laundry and dishes pile up. More and more money is being spent on the kids; my allowance is getting smaller and smaller. And in spite of all the giving and compromising that is part and parcel of being a parent, I could never imagine those two boys not being in my life. I adore them too much. So, it seems to me like a lot of unnecessary grief to cut a parent or child out of your life like that.

Expert in Japanese psychology and society will tell you that the Japanese tend to avoid “complicated relationships”. This is one reason why it is so uncommon for the Japanese, even college students, to have roommates. Try as I might to sell them on the idea of living in a much bigger apartment for far less rent if only they shared the place with a friend, but they invariably grimace or suck air through their teeth and make vague allusions to a need for privacy. [3] It is also the reason why after divorce many Japanese will break off all ties with their former spouse, even if that means no longer seeing a child.

I asked the twelve students in that writing class of mine how many of their parents were divorced and was surprised to learn that almost half of them were. All of them—it’s a woman’s college—lived with their mothers, and very few of them had any contact with their fathers. Only one actively maintained a relationship with her father. The others hated their old man, no doubt influenced by the opinions of their mothers. As an “old man” myself I couldn’t help but feel for these estranged fathers.[4]

. . .

After an hour or so, Mika’s former husband and current roommate called. He was in the neighborhood and ready to take their kids home. All of us—Mika, her kids, my wife, our boys, and I—went downstairs and waited for him to show up. When he did, he stepped out of the car, walked towards me and shook my hand. It was our first time to meet (and, probably our last as well).

I was struck by how good-looking the guy was (Mika's not bad-looking herself) and I said so after he had left with the kids.

“His looks are the only thing that’s good about him,” Mika said.

Mika then said she had to be going herself, adding as she turned to leave that she would contact me once she had found a new place to live.

(This is normally where Americans would hug each other tightly, but we just waved and said good-bye.)

Mika had brought a bottle of shôchû with her when she came, asking the silly question: “You still drink, don’t you?”

“Does the pope shit in the woods?”

. . .

After Mika left, I went back upstairs and opened the bottle. It was Iichiko’s Hita Zenkōji. I’m not a big fan of Iichiko, as I have mentioned earlier, but with my first sip of Hita Zenkōji the scales fell from my eyes. Just as Ron Zacapa Centenario had reacquainted me with rum, an alcohol I once avoided at all cost, Hita Zenkōji was now introducing me to the potential of mugi (barley) jōchū.

After several glasses of Hita Zenkôji, a warm sentimentality came over me.

For your kids’ sake, Mika, I do hope you can keep your ex-husband in their lives even after you move out. And I don’t mean for some banal crap like “sons need their fathers”, but rather, so that your children can grow up learning that even when people disagree or fall out of love, they can still show civility and respect to each other, that even “complicated relationships” can have their merits.

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Kampai!

いいちこ日田全麹 (Iichiko Hita Zenkōji)

Produced by Sanwa Shurui located in Usa, Ōita prefecture

25% Alc/Vol

Made from barley and only malted barely, hence the name Zenkōji.

Nose: ★★★

For a mugi (barley) jōchū, Hita Zenkōji has a rather strong, but pleasant fragrance. Pleasant, I should caution, if only you’re into that kind of thing. For those who prefer their shōchū to be odorless, Hita Zenkōji probably won’t be your cup of tea.

Palate: ★★★

Same goes for the flavor. Very strong, reminiscent of the sweeter varieties of imo jōchū. This is the first mugi jōchū I wouldn’t mind stocking my bar with.

Overall: ★★★

Incidentally, I would rate my current marriage life as ★★★★★. My previous attempt to achieve conjugal bliss, however, banged between zero and two and a half stars.

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[1] Ajibi is nickname of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (福岡アジアン美術館), located in Fukuoka’s Hakata-ku. It is, in their own words, “the only museum in the world that systematically collects and exhibits Asian modern and contemporary art”.

[2] Unlike the States where you typically only have to pay the first and last month’s rent plus a cleaning deposit when moving into a new apartment, in Japan, you can sometimes find yourself set back as much as five to ten thousand dollars in deposits and fees and gifts to the realtor.

[3] So lock the door when you look at Internet porn.

[4] “Estranged” as is meant in the original sense of the Latin extraneare which means to ‘treat as a stranger’.

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More stories like this can be found in Kampai! Available from Amazon.