Kenshin Sake is a San Francisco-based online sake store.
We are passionate about sake so we take care to hand select and curate the best bottles from around the world. Finding great products isn’t the end of the story though—we strive to bring out the full potential in sake and to share that with you.
Kikusui. Image by Jason M. Lang, courtesy of Gatehouse Publishing.
Est. 1881
The Kikusui brewery was founded in 1881 by Setsugoro Takasawa, who left his family home at the age of 16 to start his own business. In 1905 the business was inherited by the second generation Shuntaro who energetically studied advancing brewing techniques from across the country, introduced rice polishing machines and increased the kura’s sales, creating a 1,000-koku brewery. However, in 1940 Shuntaro succumbed to cerebral apoplexy and the following year his son, Tokujiro, also passed away due to renal failure. Tokujiro’s son, Eisuke, was only 11 at the time of his death, leaving his widow, Chiyo, to become the third brewery manager. Eisuke finally became the fourth company president in 1954.
Kikusui. Image by Jason M. Lang, courtesy of Gatehouse Publishing.
Eisuke took what he learned from studying at the Waseda University School of Commerce, paired it his family’s spirit of enterprise and continued their work to modernize the brewery, beginning with abolishing the kioke (wooden cask) system. But his kura was destroyed during the 1964 Niigata earthquake, and in the flooding of the Kaji river in 1966 and ’67. In 1969 Eisuke moved the business to its current location, and abandoned the tōji system in 1972, propelling them forward by bringing in more advanced equipment for more logical production.
Daisuke Takasawa, current owner of Kikusui. Image by Jason M. Lang, courtesy of Gatehouse Publishing.