2027

In 2026

In 2026, session 9 asked what it takes for toji and kurabito to make brewing a lifelong job. What was heard, though, was the experience of those who managed to stay.

What 2027 asks

Sake and Japanese wine are both fermented brews, but they sit differently as industries. Sake is spoken of as a traditional industry and as culture. Japanese wine is an imported culture, sits in a promotion category, and in business terms is closer to a start-up. Shochu and craft sake each occupy their own place on that axis. Where norms are not filtered through tradition, both working conditions and gender gaps should look different. The same question set across industries is how we find where the conditions worth working under actually are.

In 2026

In 2026, session 1 took up North American case studies and transparency in export contracts, while session 2 asked who defines sake's backbone. The export floor and the institutional side sat side by side.

What 2027 asks

With the domestic market contracting, hopes have gathered around growth abroad, yet each new measure has been stacked on without looking back at what worked and what did not. The subject here is not individual effort but the structures that keep repeating: measures that run once and lead nowhere; success measured in counts, of participating breweries, of importers, of meetings held, without ever checking whether those counts turned into sales or a lasting presence; and staff rotating every few years so that nothing long-term carries over. We collect these as cases, and take them as far as a proposal for where the budget and the time should go.

In 2026

In 2026, session 4 mapped the institutional facts from a survey of 116 brewers and successors, sessions 5 and 6 went on to design how new licences could be issued, and session 7 took up the reality of business succession.

What 2027 asks

The debate currently splits between putting dormant licences to use first and issuing new ones as a matter of fairness, and it has stalled without the two sides meeting. Rather than putting that to the vote again, 2027 asks every side to bring the evidence its proposal rests on: why this measure grows the market, and on what grounds that can be claimed. The point is to get past hunches and personal conviction. Dormant licences, succession and new licences all go on the same table to be compared.