Ryuichiro Masuda

When speaking about craftsmanship, we have a tendency to romanticise the artisan using techniques that have remained consistent for centuries. In our fast-paced world dominated by technology, we seem to find comfort in this longevity, this immutable adherence to tradition. For Ryuichiro Masuda, craft is hugely important, but it doesn’t mean you can’t also be open to change, to learning, improving and adapting.

“I think a lot about what it means when we talk about tradition,” says Masuda, who is the fifth-generation owner of Masuda Sake Brewery, a sake brewery in Toyama City that was founded by his ancestors in 1893 and is today best known for its premium Masuizumi sake. “Even if we say we use ‘traditional brewing methods’, the baseline for what we do now was established with our ginjō-shu three decades ago,” he says, referring to a specific sake made from rice that has undergone more intense milling. “This is different from what my ancestors did 100 or 200 years ago. Would we really call that traditional? We’re still figuring things out.” It’s a sign of his willingness to learn that he can still say his family is “figuring things out” after over 130 years of sake brewing – but this is typical of Masuda’s mindset.

Masuda’s father passed the business on to him in 2004 when he was 37 years old. “From the moment I was born, I was raised to believe that I would inherit the business,” he says. “There wasn’t really any other choice for me.” Since taking over, he has been growing the company and reshaping it in his own image. He feels no pang of guilt for evolving the business, no great sense of duty to keep everything as it once was. “Everything about Japan has changed over the past 30 years. My father lived through an era of modernisation, whereas I’m living through an era of culture,” he explains. “Every generation has a different idea of what works, which is the way it should be. If I were to negate everything that my father did when he ran the business, it would be OK, because I live in an era that’s completely different from his.”

It’s often claimed that the strength of family businesses lies in continuity and consistency across the decades and the generations, and this is of course mostly true. But as Masuda sees it, family businesses are also able to renew themselves in ways that other firms simply cannot. “Every 30 years, the family business undergoes a transformation. I run the business now but after 30 years of my leadership, it will pass on to the next generation,” he says. “In a company run by leaders who change over every five or six years, dramatic change isn’t possible. In a family business, big change is possible.”

Big change is certainly what he has brought to Masuda Brewery. Having travelled extensively in Europe and North America, Masuda brought an understanding of modern luxury and a deeper knowledge of global markets back to the sake brewing business. “In travelling to the US and Europe, I’ve had the chance to experience a lot, see different traditions and understand what my own culture is, and to feel pride in what the region where I’m from has to offer,” he says.

Around 95 per cent of the world’s sake is currently consumed in Japan, so one of Masuda’s great missions is what he describes as “the globalisation of sake appreciation”. In 2019, he took a giant stride towards that goal when he partnered with Richard Geoffroy, who had served as head winemaker at Dom Pérignon for 28 years, to create a new premium sake brand aimed at the global market: IWA Sake. From its bottles created by designer Marc Newson to its brewery designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, IWA has been crafted to appeal to a consumer beyond Japan’s borders.

Yet it’s in the sake brewing itself that IWA is proving most radical. Geoffroy has borrowed the technique of assemblage from champagne making and applied it to sake brewing, blending different rices, yeasts and vintages in order to achieve consistent high-quality results. Masuda shows no signs of protectiveness towards more traditional methods. “Geoffroy has opened our eyes, we’ve learned a lot from him,” he says. “I feel strongly that Japan’s sake industry needs to look at new ways of brewing that haven’t been explored before. Many of the things that brewers in Japan have traditionally done are not necessarily the definitive ways of making sake, and these kinds of observations from outsiders can help bring big changes to Japan’s sake industry.”

Masuda’s influence isn’t just limited to the world of sake, however. He has also taken it upon himself over the past 25 years to transform Iwase, the suburb of Toyama City where his brewery is based, into a hotbed of artisanal crafts and gastronomy. Following another inspirational trip to Europe, he decided to rejuvenate Iwase, which had fallen on bad times. He bought up the suburb’s abandoned shops and warehouses, renovated them and then persuaded chefs and craftspeople to move in and take over the spaces. Today it’s a very different picture. “In the 400 metres between my home and the brewery, there are six restaurants that are listed in the Michelin Guide,” says Masuda. “There are glass artisans and master potters, sculptors and blacksmiths, beer brewers and sake tasting rooms. Little by little, these world-class artists and artisans have found their way to this place.”

Yet while this decision to revive Iwase was his own choice, sometimes this kind of action is forced upon you. In January of this year, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Noto peninsula, just to the north of Toyama, the strongest to hit Ishikawa Prefecture since 1885. The quake killed 230 people and badly damaged or destroyed close to 50,000 homes. “My children and I are trying hard to be the leaders that the region needs,” Masuda says. He is in discussions with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and prefectural officials to create a blueprint for post-disaster reconstruction in the region: “a blueprint that gives breweries hope and demonstrates that by persevering this is an opportunity to become even better than before,” he says. “We can’t just dismantle a business that has taken 100 or 150 years to build. But when something is damaged, as we’ve seen with the Noto Peninsula earthquake, it’s an opportunity for a reset, a chance for a transformation into something new.”

As ever, Masuda’s focus is on the future, on the new. So, what plans does he still have for both the brewery and the region? “I want to have a hotel here,” he says. “We are currently moving ahead with plans for a new brewery in collaboration with European and American partners, and we face the challenge of taking that sake global.” He doesn’t like to think of these as challenges, though. “We only think of them as projects we want to and should take on.”

Beyond that, has he thought about the next generation and when his children might take over the business and begin their own transformation of Masuda Brewery? “They’re not working in the industry now, but I hope they will decide to in the future,” says Masuda, who has two sons and a daughter, all in their twenties. “Naturally, if one day they say they want to return, I will welcome them and work with them. It’s not for me to say something that would lead to it.” Traditionally, the business would be passed on to the eldest son, but Masuda isn’t overly concerned about this custom. “If, instead of my sons, my daughter wants to run the business,” he says, “and her elder and younger brothers approve, that’s fine with me.” With running a family company as with brewing sake, there’s always room for innovation.