Shigemasu Sake — Takahashi Shoten, a Brewery Founded in 1717 in Yame, Fukuoka

Shigemasu (繁桝) is the sake brand of Takahashi Shoten, a brewery founded in 1717 in Yame, a basin town in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu. If you have seen the name on a sake menu and tried to find out more in English, you have probably noticed there is not much out there. This page is a starting point.

The brewery

Takahashi Shoten has been brewing in Yame's old merchant quarter for over three centuries. The brewery presents its sake-making as hand-crafted work, with particular emphasis on koji — the culture at the heart of sake brewing. Today the house is led by Takuya Nakagawa, the 19th-generation head of the brewery.

Yame itself is better known abroad for green tea — it is one of Japan's renowned tea regions, famous for gyokuro. A sake brewery of this age in a tea town is exactly the kind of layer most visitors never find.

Talk with the brewery — in English

Here is the part you cannot get from a label: what to pick for a gift, how the brewery thinks about its koji work, what the town around the brewery is like. Takahashi Shoten runs an online chat officially approved by the owner, and it works in English.

To be clear about what it is: the chat is an AI. We state that openly. Its answers are based on the owner's own first-hand information, the owner decides what it may and may not talk about, and it is free to use.