The Rise, the Fall and the Resurgence of the Japanese Craft Beer Industry

Abstract

This article aims to explain the rise, the fall and the resurgence of the Japanese craft beer industry. This phenomenon started in 1994 after the Japanese government reduced the minimum annual beer production requirement for obtaining a beer brewing license from 2 million liters to 60,000 liters. This, in turn, enabled smaller enterprises to enter into the lucrative beer market. After almost half a decade of the exponential growth of the so-called ‘jibiru’ (the term for craft beer in Japanese in the first phase), the Japanese craft beer market experienced a constant decline in the following decade before rebounding at the end of the 2000s until now. This paper demonstrates that the existing theories in the field such as the pivotal role of craft beer pioneers, law and regulation, consumer preferences and cultural factors cannot explain this dynamism in the Japanese craft beer industry. The main contention of this article is that the change in regulation has been a ‘necessary’ condition in explaining the rise of the craft beer industry, but not ‘sufficient’ to explain the dynamism in the following period. Another important factor is the craft beer culture itself which is marked by a passion for quality and new possibilities in brewing craft beer among Japan’s craft beer producers. This resurgence in domestic beer culture has resulted from the steady interaction and exchange with the international craft beer culture as well as beer community building among local craft brewers.