About us

Our values

Brewing exquisite sake.
Curating enchanting settings.

We take pride in our relentless pursuit of exploring and perfecting the art of brewing sake. Our commitment extends to our engagement in delivering products with a flexible mindset to cater to our customers, whose tastes have become increasingly diverse. We utilize our brewery’s premises to curate spaces and host events with the aim of providing enchanting settings where guests can immerse themselves in the world of Japanese sake.

We take great pleasure in knowing that sake will continue to be loved through the ages and well into the future. The journey forward is shaped by the culmination of our daily efforts. That is why we are revisiting our origins and embracing the spirit of Kinoene (甲子, or Wood Rat), the first combination of the sexagenary cycle of the ancient Chinese zodiac. Rooted in this philosophy, we remain unwavering in our devotion to brewing exquisite sake and curating enchanting settings as we endeavor to realize this in our daily operations.

Adding vibrance to new beginnings

Since ancient history, the Japanese have believed that commencing something new on the day or year of the Kinoene, the first combination of the sexagenary cycle, ensures a steady flow of good fortune and positive energy, thus paving the way to prosperity and success.
Founded on the spirit of Kinoene, we embrace the following message:
Adding vibrance to new beginnings

Be it the commencement of a joyous celebration or the dawn of a new chapter in life during seasonal transitions, we aspire to be the sake and brewer that adds a touch of vibrancy when a new and exhilarating experience is about to unfold.

Through our products and venues, we channel the values embedded in the making of our updated Kinoene.

Message from the president

Narrating more of the future than the history
In pursuit of our creative endeavors

Brewing sake with an aim to inspire an image of a refined countryside may oftentimes be associated with words such as eternal, old, and tradition. However, the people drinking sake and those brewing it are all living in the present. Kinoene Masamune has a history of over 300 years, but we would not have been able to carry on our heritage for this many years had we continued to manufacture sake in the same method as our ancestors. Therefore, as a sake brewer, we are currently focused on narrating more of the future than the history in pursuing our creative endeavors.

We pride ourselves in the creation of Kinoene Masamune, which we believe spearheads the new wave of sake. Our mastery of sake brewing involves setting high targets to achieve the desired quality and taste as well as to aspire toward further advancement. Sake cannot exist independently on its own and, therefore, should always be considered with an awareness for its relationship with food. Naturally, we craft our sake with the intention of pairing it with washoku (traditional Japanese cuisine), a registered Intangible Cultural Heritage of the world. That is why Kinoene Masamune is so palatable when it becomes a part of the dining experience.

What we also want now is for young people to drink and familiarize themselves with sake. We believe our efforts would be fruitless if the upcoming generation does not appreciate our sake. As a solution to this concern, we have entrusted young sake brewers to take charge of manufacturing Kinoene Masamune and created a competitive setting where brewers at their peak drinking age and at the height of their careers can test their skills against one another. Through these efforts, we have successfully shifted to a system that allows us to create sake that distinctively caters to a younger clientele. From there, we have gradually moved onward and upward to a point where we now deliver highly acclaimed sake into the market.

I will always aspire to put Shisui, Chiba on the map alongside the Kinoene Masamune brand.

Kiichiro Iinuma
President, Iinuma Honke

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An open and immersive brewery experience

In almost every region is a longstanding sake brewery, and it’s not rare to come across one that was founded as late as the Edo period. With today’s advancement in logistics and transport, products can easily be acquired from any region, but we are confident in saying that no entity has embodied the history of its region as much as sake breweries have. We hope to promote the Shisui community, which had never been the center for tourism, through our brewery and communicate the charms of the locale to the rest of Japan.