Published: 1 April 2021
Last updated: 5 March 2024
TUCKED WITHIN the mountains of Japan’s Gifu prefecture, in the middle of Takayama, lies Funasaka Sake Brewery. With its dark-wood walls and stacked sake barrels, it looks typical. But inside is a surprise: Funasaka sells top-notch kosher sake.
Less than one percent of the Japanese population identifies as Jewish, but according to Hiroki Arisu, the brewery’s 35-year-old president and CEO, the land-locked prefecture welcomes more than 10,000 Israeli travellers annually — an impressive number given Takayama is home to fewer than 90,000 residents.
So why do so many Israelis visit the modestly sized city, and in numbers great enough to inspire a local brewery to navigate Judaism’s famously complicated dietary laws?
The roots of the influx go back to World War II, when Chiune Sugihara, a local of Gifu, took action in a way that earned him, in 1985, just before his death at age 86, the honorific “Righteous Among the Nations” from the state of Israel.
FULL STORY The heartwarming history behind a brewery’s kosher sake (Atlas Obscura)
Photo: Rabbi Edery and CEO Hiroki Arisu outside Funasaka Sake Brewery in Gifu, Japan (Courtesy of Kosher Japan)
