Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles
Most people who know the Nikka Whisky story know it as a story of Scotland and Hokkaido. Masataka Taketsuru, the founder of Japanese whisky alongside Shinjiro Torii of Suntory, studied distillation in Scotland, returned to Japan, married a Scottish woman, and built what would become Nikka in the cold north.
Fewer people know that the story begins in Hiroshima.
The Hiroshima Connection
Masataka Taketsuru was born in 1894 in Takehara — a small city about 60 kilometres east of Hiroshima, historically prosperous through sake brewing and salt production. The Taketsuru family were sake brewers. Masataka grew up around fermentation and distillation from childhood.
It was the Hiroshima environment — the sake culture, the tradition of craft production, the particular regional way of thinking about quality and patience — that formed the foundation on which everything else was built. When Taketsuru went to Scotland and encountered whisky, he was not encountering distillation for the first time. He was encountering a new application of principles he already understood.
The recent rebroadcast of “Massan” — the NHK drama based on Taketsuru’s life — brought this origin story back into public conversation. For someone based in Hiroshima, as I am, it gives Nikka’s whisky an additional dimension: it is, in part, a story that starts here.
Nikka / Taketsuru expressions are available at Bar Little Happiness. Read the full Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/taketsuru-massan-hiroshima-whisky-story/
Bar Little Happiness | Hiroshima, Japan
Rum & Whisky specialists | 1,000+ bottles | English menu available
Open Mon–Sat 7PM–12:30AM, Sun 7PM–midnight
No cover charge. Walk-ins welcome.
english.little-happiness.jp