Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles
There is a sentence on the website of Otani — the stamp and seal business that is the Tsunoda family’s established enterprise — that explains Kameda Distillery better than any whisky description could.
It was written by the previous generation of the family, and it reads: “To bloom one’s possibilities within a single lifetime, to grow through one’s work.”
When Tsunoda-shacho’s wife told him to “just make your own whisky then,” she was not speaking impulsively. She was speaking from a family culture that treats the attempt to do something extraordinary with your life as a basic obligation.
The Pharmaceutical Mind Meets the Whisky World
Tsunoda-shacho is not a classically trained distiller. He is a former MR — a medical representative whose career was built on reading scientific literature, understanding biochemistry, identifying the right information for the right situation, and making arguments based on evidence.
All of that transferred directly to whisky production. The controlled fermentation experiments, the narrow middle cuts, the systematic cask trials — these are not the decisions of someone who learned distilling by tradition. They are the decisions of someone who approached an unfamiliar craft with a scientist’s methodology and an enthusiast’s passion.
The in-house malting programme — which he was told by multiple advisors not to attempt at the outset — is perhaps the clearest expression of this. Conventional wisdom says to buy your malt from specialists until you’re established. Tsunoda-shacho wanted to use Niigata barley from the beginning, which meant malting it himself. He did.
The Eel and the Disability Support
Kameda Distillery generates substantial hot water as a by-product of distillation — temperatures around 70°C that most small distilleries simply dispose of. Tsunoda-shacho uses it to maintain the temperature of eel-farming tanks on site. The eels are sold locally.
More significantly: the bottling and labelling work at Kameda is carried out by workers from a local supported employment programme for people with disabilities — a practice that dates back four decades in the Otani business and continues at the distillery. Tsunoda-shacho spoke about this not as a CSR initiative but as a straightforward expression of the family’s values: work is participation, and participation belongs to everyone.
The Zodiac Bottles
Kameda’s early releases use a Zodiac label series — each bottle imagining the whisky as a person. The first release was a Pisces woman, soft and sweet. The second was a Capricorn man, his room filled with the particular smokiness of peated barley aged in unusual casks.
The conceit sounds whimsical, but it points to something real: Kameda makes whiskies with distinct personalities, and those personalities come directly from the choices made at every stage of production.
Kameda Distillery whisky is available at Bar Little Happiness. These bottles are rare and sell out quickly — Mika has been stocking them since the early releases. Read the full Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/kameda-distillery-visit-vol4/
Also see the complete Kameda series overview: little-happiness.jp/columns/kameda-distillery-report/
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