Kikuchi Brewery and the Kimura Method of Natural Rice Farming

If you like visiting sake bars, then you’ll love Chapter 20 of our forthcoming book, Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth. In it, my co-writer Michael Tremblay and I take readers along on some of our most memorable sake bar crawls in cities across Japan from Sapporo to Fukuoka.

Kawai-san plies us with generous pours of Okayama jizake at Sake Bar Sakabayashi.

One of my favorite evenings was a visit to the old-school Sake Bar Sakabayashi near the train station in Okayama City. The restaurant’s broad wooden bars have started to lose their finish over the years, and the red leatherette-covered stools have seen better days. Our bartender Kawai-san described himself to us as a nonbe (heavy drinker) who was just filling in as a favor to a friend. What he lacked in speed he amply made up for with his love of sake. Fridges filled with isshobin beckoned welcomingly and we happily put ourselves in his hands. One of the many locally brewed bottles that Kawai-san selected for us was an all-natural junmai ginjo made by Kikuchi Brewery in Kurashiki City.

Kikuchi Brewery’s Kimura method junmai ginjo.

Called “Kimura-shiki Kiseki no Osake” (“The Kimura Method Miracle Sake”), it was brewed using the local table rice Asahi-mai (mai ,米, means “rice”). We found it gentle on the palate, umami rich, and with a clean finish—something we could keep drinking for a long time. The Kimura Method, we learned, was a type of natural cultivation developed by an Aomori Prefecture apple farmer named Akinori Kimura.

Kimura considers his method “beyond organic,” as it uses no chemical or organic fertilizers, no pesticides and no compost. Instead plant life is nourished by harnessing beneficial soil microbes that work in concert with local insect, animal, and bird life. Kimura believes that too often plants are overfed when everything they need to thrive exists in the natural environment.

Aomori is famed for its apples, but up until the development of Kimura’s method commercial apple farmers there considered it impossible to grow good apples without the use of pesticides. Beginning in 1978, Kimura braved 10 years of abject failure in his attempts to grow apples with no chemical inputs. But he had a powerful incentive: his wife had fallen ill due to pesticide-related illness and he wanted to find a healthier way to farm. The long, lean years with no harvest came to an end when he finally perfected his method. Since then, he has written about this journey and until not too long ago, lectured widely. His story was even adapted for the stage, performed in Tokyo in 2010, and turned into a movie in 2013!

Intrigued at how a farming method that originated far from Okayama, in the northernmost prefecture of Japan’s main Honshu Island, could take root there, I reached out to Kikuchi Shuzo to learn more from the brewery’s managing director Daisuke Kikuchi.

The story begins more than a decade ago, Kikuchi says, when Kimura visited the neighboring prefecture of Hiroshima to give a lecture. In the audience that day was Keichi Takahashi, the owner of Sushi Yokan, a sushi restaurant with branches in Okayama, Hiroshima and Yamaguchi Prefectures and also a friend of Kikuchi Shuzo’s owner and master brewer To Kikuchi. Takahashi was so impressed with Kimura that he decided to grow rice according to the Kimura method for use in his sushi restaurants. Kimura recommended starting with Asahi rice, which happens to be an ancestor to both Koshihikari and Sasanishiki. It’s favored by sushi chefs for its ability to retain its sweetness and umami after cooking. Yet like Omachi, another heirloom rice variety native to Okayama, it is more difficult to grow than modern hybrids bred for industrial cultivation.

Left to right: Kikuchi Brewery owner and master brewer To Kikuchi, his son and brewery managing director Daisuke Kikuchi, and Daisuke’s wife Yoko Kikuchi. Photo courtesy of Kikuchi Brewery.

To Kikuchi, too, was curious. He had suffered from asthma in his youth, so the idea of brewing sake with the most natural, unadulterated ingredients possible resonated with him. At the invitation of his friend Takahashi, he joined the 2010 effort to launch the non-profit Okayama Prefecture Kimurashiki Natural Cultivation Authority. Under the guidance of Kimura himself, the group learned to grow both table rice and sake rice according to his method. The powerful Japan Agricultural Cooperative took part in the effort as well.

One of the Kimurashiki Natural Cultivation Authority’s rice fields. Photo courtesy of Kikuchi Brewery.

Kikuchi Brewery now purchases heirloom Kimura Method Asahi and Omachi rice grown locally by farmer members of the non-profit. It produces five different Kimura Method labels, two of which (the Omachi  45 junmai daiginjo and the Asahi junmai ginjo) are available in the U.S. (I picked up a bottle of the junmai ginjo at Astor Wines & Spirits in New York City). All of them except for the Omachi 80 junmai are brewed with ginjo yeasts, Kikuchi adds, which impart both high aroma and a slightly sweet, easy-drinking taste.

Farmers initially had a hard time growing Kimura Method rice but with the accumulation of experience their crops have improved, Kikuchi explains. One of Kikuchi’s kurabito cultivates Kimura-method Omachi during the spring and summer months and a total of three brewery workers double as natural rice farmers—a throw-back to the ancient tradition of rice farmers brewing sake during the fallow winter period, and an example of brewers trying to both revive local ecosystems and return to a more local (jizake) types of expression.

Kikuchi Brewery’s Kimura Method sakes have collected awards from a number of different competitions, including the U.S. National Sake Appraisal and Kura Masters, and have become a mainstay of the brewery’s offerings. Kikuchi notes that the brand is especially popular in Europe, where interest in locally cultivated rice varieties and natural farming methods is strong.

Kimura method naturally grown rice. Photo courtesy of Kikuchi Brewery.

Kimura himself holds a spiritual view of farming as a mutually beneficial practice for plants and humans, and his point of view is one that I’d like to hear more often in Japan: “When you put your hands in soil, they get dirty, but it also smooths the rough edges of your heart,” he has said. “I hope consumers will start to think of farmers more. How many consumers from urban areas, who benefit the most from producers, think about them? I think it’s important for both sides to shorten the distance between agriculture and the city—and not just physically.”

In Other Sake News…

The sake book that I co-wrote with sake sommelier and Sake Samurai Michael Tremblay, Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth, is now available for pre-order! Please check both my re-designed website and the dedicated page for our book to learn more about its contents and hear what people are saying about it..

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