Kuma Shochu Breweries of Hitoyoshi-Kuma

The Hitoyoshi-Kuma area of Kumamoto, where rice shochu has been made for about 500 years since the Muromachi period. Distilling may have arrived through the trade of the Sagara clan, and today 27 breweries make Kuma shochu. At Koriyama Hachiman Shrine in Okuchi, then under Sagara influence, the oldest known writing of the word shochu, from 1559, survives.