This entry will not explore the phenomenon of declining domestic sake sales in great depth, nor will it contain the citations and academic references that characterize many of my blog entries.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that in Japan the drinking of nihon-shu carries unwanted baggage for some Japanese youth. In short, the beverage has an image problem. To such people, the drink’s high alcohol content is associated with calories and weight gain. Fair enough, of course, but this can easily be dismissed by considering the satiety factor. A glass of whole milk, preferably raw, is far more satisfying than an equivalent amount of skim milk. Heavy cream is even better, of course. Closer to home, a more appropriate example would be that of lite beer. Readers who wish to explore the issue of satiety are encouraged to juxtapose any lite beer with, say, a brew like Germany’s EKU 28. One glass of the latter is enough to bring a smile to most faces, and due to its richness, a natural limit of one or two bottles is imposed on the drinker. The same cannot be said for the former, where satisfaction is seemingly never reached.
To the aforementioned cohort, sake drinkers themselves are stereotyped as old men, shabbily, or at least unfashionably, dressed, hunched like question marks over their cups or, worse, noticeably in their cups. While such people do exist, I would venture to say that they represent a small segment of the nihon-shu drinking public.
More on this next week.
Drinking Japan 