Industry (Foodstuff)

Sake (Higashi-Hiroshima)

In places with fresh, tasty water and delicious rice very good sake can be brewed.
There are many sake breweries all over Hiroshima Prefecture. In particular Saijo town of Higashi-Hiroshima belongs with Nada in Kansai and Fushimi to the three most famous sake producing areas in Japan.
Saijo district at the foot the mountains is located at the northern end of a plateau on an altitude of 200 m. The available water contains an appropriate amount of chlorine and is of intermediate hardness. Differences between warm and cold during the sake brewing season in winter are not very marked and thus provide optimal natural conditions for the brewing. A combination of rigorously selected sake rice and the results of long years of research into sake brewing technologies helped to establish the present rank of Hiroshima's sake.

Saijo's sake is delicious and can be drunk without loosing interest or getting satiated ("fed up").
In 1898 in Akitsu within Toyoda district the sake brewer Senzaburou Miura introduced a brewing technique using soft water and the obtained sake gained a high reputation.
The Saijou sakes developed to a perfection that the society for the evaluation of sake products established in 1907 awarded them one after the other with high prizes.
Moreover, following recent consumer trends efforts are made to develop new, value added product like Ginjo sake, pure rice sake and "real" brewed sake.
In July 1995 the Brewery Laboratory of the National Tax Office moved from Tokyo into the science park of Higaghi-Hiroshima and now conducts there studies of sake brewing.

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