Sumiyoshi Shuhan is a sake shop in Fukuoka that has long stood alongside its local customers. While valuing sincere, community-rooted commerce, the company has carved out its own path by moving back and forth between the local and the innovative — opening a store in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya and building a following on YouTube.
Leading Sumiyoshi Shuhan is its president, Kentai Shojima. After working in the fish trade and the restaurant industry, he returned to the family sake business. Prompted by the pandemic, he re-examined the fundamental questions of what sake is and what a sake shop is for, and has also gone on to develop new brands such as "Shuwan," a sake vessel that is both highly artistic and functionally refined.
Rather than simply being swept along by the changing times, he keeps looking at the fundamental role of a sake shop and reshapes it accordingly. We spoke with him about his own journey and that of Sumiyoshi Shuhan.
(Sumiyoshi Shuhan Co., Ltd. — President Kentai Shojima)
From a Wholesale-Focused Past to a Present Built Alongside Local Sake
—— What history led up to Sumiyoshi Shuhan's current style?
Kentai Shojima (hereafter "Shojima") Originally, the main family business was a sake wholesaler in an area called Itoshima in western Fukuoka Prefecture. The wholesaler that was the predecessor of Sumiyoshi Shuhan was founded in the third year of Taisho (1914). It's a company that has been in business for more than 100 years.
Up until around Showa 60 (1985), I think things were going quite well. Back then everyone really did drink a lot, and the market was also protected by the licensing system. But once the 1990s began and deregulation of retail sales licenses started, the situation changed dramatically. It became an era where you could get sake anywhere — supermarkets, convenience stores, you name it. Across the country, the sake-wholesaler business model went into steady decline.
—— And it was in the midst of that turbulent era that your father founded "Sumiyoshi Shuhan"?
Shojima My father was the second son of the main family, so he came out to Fukuoka City to start what was, in effect, a branch of the family business. At first, it was mainly delivery to restaurants — business-to-business sales. The shift toward the kind of local-sake specialty store image we have today happened during my father's time, but it was still fundamentally a B2B sake wholesaler.
—— How did things change after you came back to join the family business?
Shojima I came back to the family business 16 years ago, and I felt that a business built purely on B2B intermediary distribution would eventually stop being needed by the world.
Right around that time, a culture of buying sake to enjoy at home was just starting to emerge — it was around when what we'd now call the 720ml bottle was starting to become common. Before that, it was either wholesaling one-shō (1.8-liter) bottles to restaurants, or genuinely heavy drinkers enjoying sake at home.
The flavors of sake were also diversifying rapidly, and new styles kept emerging one after another. So from the very start, I was already thinking we needed to strengthen our B2C business.
(Sumiyoshi Shuhan's main Hakata store in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture)
Aiming to Be a Sake Shop That Delivers Value, Not Just Products
Shojima Before I came back to the sake business, I worked in Tokyo, at a restaurant and at a fish shop that was very particular about its craft. Since I was on the buying side, purchasing sake from wholesalers, I was seeing what a sake shop was from the "other side." That's exactly why I had such a strong sense that just taking orders and delivering products would eventually stop being needed.
So I decided to aim to become the kind of sake shop that delivers value only we can provide to our customers.
—— Did you plan from the start to combine offline sales with e-commerce?
Shojima When I first came back to the sake business, I couldn't touch e-commerce at all. The only option available to me was to communicate directly with the customers right in front of me in Fukuoka City, and I felt that was exactly what I needed to focus on.
The sake we carried was also, at first, only from our local region of Kyushu. It felt like building a chain of shared understanding — telling local stories about local sake, in the local area. Through that accumulation, our customer base gradually grew, and the breweries we carried expanded beyond Kyushu to cover the whole country.
What COVID Made Us Re-Examine: The "True Value" of Sake and the Sake Shop
Sumiyoshi Shuhan was on a path of expansion, having opened a store in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya. It was right then that the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. As the very idea of a sake shop as a gathering place came into question, Shojima found himself confronting the inherent value of sake itself, and the true essence of what a sake shop is.
Shojima Two years before the pandemic, when Tokyo Midtown Hibiya opened, we opened a Sumiyoshi Shuhan location there. Mitsui Fudosan reached out to us. At the time, it wasn't common for a regional specialty shop to compete in Tokyo, so I was genuinely happy about it.
At that point we still weren't doing e-commerce, so it really was hand-to-hand combat, so to speak — the only option was to communicate directly on the ground. But something in me just wasn't burning with excitement. I had this feeling that it would end simply as "we opened a store" and nothing more. Regulars kept increasing, but I felt somehow unsatisfied, wondering where to take things from there.
—— And that's when the pandemic hit.
Shojima I decided to reset, once and for all. What I thought about again at that point was: what actually is a sake shop? During the pandemic, there were even things like prohibition-style restrictions. Alcohol was treated as if it were entirely bad. Sake got lumped in together with every other kind of alcohol and painted as the villain, too.
But sake is a sacred offering to the gods. It's something that has been passed down as a symbol of Japan for more than 2,000 years, and yet the moment an unprecedented crisis hit, it got cast as the villain. That made me feel a real sense of outrage.
When I fundamentally rethought what sake is and what a sake shop is at that moment, I realized that our real joy had always come from contributing to the customer right in front of us. There was meaning in delivering it directly — that was the cause we stood for.
(Sumiyoshi Shuhan's Tokyo Midtown Hibiya store, opened in 2018)
YouTube as an Extension of Customer Service
Driven by his outrage at seeing sake treated as something bad, Shojima returned to his original purpose of communicating its true value. YouTube was the medium he chose to carry that message across the country while staying rooted in Fukuoka. The video series, which layers direct communication over customer service, continues to this day, with more than 700 episodes published.
Shojima I wanted to bring about positive change for the future of sake. Through the pandemic, my own desire to give something back to sake and to the industry grew stronger.
While continuing to value that sense of delivering things directly to the customer right in front of me in Fukuoka, I wanted to create a proper way to convey the real appeal of sake more broadly — to speak to people across the whole country, in our own words. YouTube was one of the ways we chose to do that.
—— You've been posting consistently on YouTube for five years now, with over 700 videos already uploaded. That's an incredible ability to keep going.
Shojima Before I even started, I'd already decided I would keep it up for at least 1,000 episodes. I figured the pandemic would definitely end eventually, and back then a lot of people were starting videos, but honestly, I suspected most of them wouldn't stick with it. So I thought, then let me do it in a style I could actually sustain for 1,000 rounds.
—— In the videos, you decide the topic each time by drawing lots, don't you?
Shojima That's basically online customer service. I take a question from a viewer and respond to it by introducing a sake that fits. It came out of thinking, when the pandemic stopped people from moving around, whether we could create something like a virtual store visit. If it had instead been a format like "today I'll introduce this product," I don't think I could have kept it up.
In business, no matter how good the product is, if customers don't come, everything stops. But conversely, if customers keep coming, the business can keep going. With a format where I draw a question by lot and respond to it, content can be generated endlessly, for as many questions as there are. That's why I settled on that style.
—— So it's really a two-way, online version of a sake shop, between shop and customer.
Shojima What I wanted to convey was, "a sake shop can actually handle all kinds of things." No matter what question comes up, we can properly choose a sake and talk about it. I wanted people to know that's the kind of thing a sake shop is.
—— Brewers know a huge amount about their own sake, of course, but that's precisely because it's their own product. When you think about it that way, it strikes me again that the sake shop is really the one with comprehensive knowledge across sake as a whole.
Shojima Exactly. While carrying sake from many different breweries, we can make suggestions suited to each one. I think that perspective is what defines a sake shop.
In the end, the market we're in is a tiny one — well under 1% of the wider world. So even when we post on social media or YouTube, honestly, I don't think we're going especially viral. But that's exactly why it matters to properly express "the thing only we can do," and build deeper connections with our fans. E-commerce, YouTube, social media — they're all pointing in the same direction.
I want to combine those channels even more, to convey the appeal of sake both more deeply and more widely.
(Shojima's YouTube channel, "Saketaisho / SAKETAISHO," which guides viewers through sake from every angle)
Not Just Selling, but Delivering a Message: Why E-Commerce and Shopify Fit So Well
Shojima pays attention not just to the sake itself, but to how it's drunk and how it's communicated. "Shuwan," the original sake-vessel brand born out of a desire to help people enjoy sake more deeply, was one symbolic example of that effort.
Shojima To begin with, sake has increasingly come to be drunk out of wine glasses. But I found myself wondering, is that really the ideal way? In a sense, you're using a borrowed vessel.
Traditional guinomi cups have their own charm, but they were made from the end of the Edo period into the Taisho era, designed to suit the sake of that time. Today's sake has evolved enormously, both in brewing technique and in flavor. So I thought, then surely we need a vessel properly optimized for it.
—— And that's how "Shuwan" came to be.
Shojima We decided to create a new kind of vessel, designed for a new way of drinking, that suits modern sake. So I teamed up with a ceramic artist to launch "Shuwan," and we even built a gallery for it. Today, it's carried by all sorts of restaurants and inns across the country.
—— It feels like this stance of proposing the way of drinking itself is directly reflected in how you present things on your e-commerce site.
Shojima That's exactly why we built our e-commerce site on Shopify. We didn't just want a place to line up products — we wanted a space where we could also carry our own thinking and the message we want to deliver.
There was a period when we used a template-style cart platform. But even when we wanted to properly include a certain piece of writing, the format was fixed and there was no freedom. Products would sell, but we couldn't convey who we really are.
I don't think it's enough for things to simply sell. I want people to resonate with the background and thinking we want to convey, and to buy with real understanding and conviction. I believe that builds a far better relationship. An e-commerce site where the message itself can take center stage — that's our ideal way of selling.
(Shuwan, a sake vessel optimized for modern sake)
In an Era When Breweries Speak for Themselves, the Sake Shop's Role Is the "First Spark"
—— Sumiyoshi Shuhan isn't a maker in the way a brewery is — it's more of a curated select shop. What differences do you feel there are between a brewery selling directly and a sake shop selling on its behalf?
Shojima About 15 years ago, back when the culture of enjoying sake at home wasn't nearly as widespread as it is now, social media hadn't spread at all either. So back then, the role of the sake shop was to speak on behalf of the maker's intentions and convey them to customers. Across the whole industry, that was said to be the sake shop's job.
But personally, I always thought hearing it directly from the person themselves would feel the most real. I felt that hearing the maker's own words carries far more resonance.
Over these past 15 years, that's steadily become reality. Today's serious enthusiasts follow the brewery's own social media accounts directly, and breweries communicate directly in their own words. It's become an era where makers speak for themselves.
Given that, what we sake shops should be doing isn't that anymore. Reaching people who are already passionate about sake is something the breweries themselves can do. What we can do is create "the first spark" for people who aren't yet particularly interested in sake — widening the entrance to the market, so to speak, gradually growing the number of people who take an interest. I believe that spark-creation is exactly what's required of sake shops today.
—— So precisely because makers can now speak for themselves, the role of creating that first step has become all the more important.
Shojima In the past, the maker and the sake shop were extremely close, to the point where a brewery might take the stance, "we won't sell it unless we approve." Even after that era, there are still quite a few breweries that don't want their products on e-commerce, and for labels with a limited number of bottles, that sensibility still lingers. But I think if we stay confined to just that, it's boring.
—— I see. So it's a structure where even how things are delivered ends up being decided for you, in a way.
Shojima Ever since I was young, I've had a real admiration for music, art, and making things. So it's not enough for me just to deliver a product — I want to obsess over "what words to deliver it with" and "what kind of emotional scene to create." I want to propose a form of the market that only I can create.
These days, both at Sumiyoshi Shuhan and at Tenshudo, we have original items made for us, and within that work, I believe there's a role only we can play. Rather than being just an intermediary distributor, I want to keep making the kinds of proposals only we can make.
(Inside Sumiyoshi Shuhan's main Hakata store in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture)
Building a Sake Shop People Want to Buy From
—— More local-sake specialty shops are appearing these days. In terms of differentiating from other shops, what do you value most in branding?
Shojima These days, if you just glance at a photo of a local-sake specialty shop, I think they all end up looking basically the same. Rows of sake bottles lined up, leaving you with an impression of "ah, they've got the famous labels" and nothing more.
There are also a lot of shops in the regions that seem to be copying the style of some highly skilled sake shop in Tokyo. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but honestly, I find it a bit boring.
—— So the strength of the lineup comes through, but not the distinct atmosphere that's unique to that particular shop.
Shojima Exactly why I want our physical store to be a sake shop that could only exist in Fukuoka. In the same way, on e-commerce too, I think there should be a color and tone that lets people instantly recognize brands like Sumiyoshi Shuhan or Tenshudo just by looking. Including on social media, I want to build a world and an atmosphere that makes people go, "ah, this is it," the moment they see it.
Then, for the customers who do come into the shop, I make sure to properly convey and deliver the products I genuinely believe in. That's the stance I take.
Rather than sake you can buy anywhere, I want to value the kind of experience and atmosphere that makes people think, "I want to buy this from this particular place, from this particular person."
Carrying forward a business that traces back to the wholesaler era, Sumiyoshi Shuhan has transformed itself into a sake shop obsessed with "how" things are delivered. Through the pandemic, it re-examined the very reason for a sake shop's existence, and has shaped an identity as a shop that communicates through a variety of means — YouTube, e-commerce, and original products alike.
The driving force behind staying rooted in the local community while delivering its philosophy nationwide is a quiet but powerful conviction: a wish to deliver not just products, but experience and atmosphere as well.
In Part 2, we dig deeper into the shape of "a sake shop that could only exist in Fukuoka," as Shojima describes it today, along with his outlook for the future.
