The question
How does brewing become a place the next generation wants to work?
* The wording is provisional and will be replaced once fixed.
The point of this session is a state of affairs in which young people come back to their home region, take work in brewing, and find it worth doing. Labour is short, young people do not stay, women find it hard to enter: all of it comes up at every industry gathering, yet what gets cited is either one brewery's anecdote or received wisdom with no clear source. We start by putting data in front of that conversation.
Deadline: November 30, 2026
One question set, across industries.
The survey is not limited to sake. Shochu, craft sake and Japanese wine producers receive the same question set. Placing industries side by side, all making alcohol but differing in method, seasonality and scale, lets us separate the conditions that genuinely follow from how the drink is made from those that follow from how organisations and customs are built.
A second axis runs alongside it: where each sits as an industry. Sake is spoken of as a traditional industry and as culture. Japanese wine is an imported culture, sits in a promotion category, and in business terms is closer to a start-up. Same fermented brew, different weight of expectation. Where norms are not filtered through tradition, the gaps should show up differently. Rather than assuming that from the industry label, the questions ask for founding year, how the business was started and how it is governed, and place each respondent from their own answers.
Aggregate results go back to the participating businesses first, so that each can see where their own operation sits within the wider picture. Preliminary findings are published at the end of May 2027; what else gets published is decided after the session has debated it.
Background
Three reasons this survey exists. Open each to read it.
Received wisdom, unchanged
How we talk about work in the sake industry has barely changed for a long time. Brewing concentrates in winter, mornings start early, the work is physical, live-in arrangements linger, and so people do not stay. None of this is wrong. All of it has been said without knowing which breweries, or how many.
Without the distribution, you cannot choose a remedy. Whether a condition holds for ninety percent of the industry or only for one size band decides whether the answer is capital investment, better institutions, or an industry-wide agreement.
Why cross industries
Survey sake alone and you cannot tell whether a finding is specific to sake brewing or common to small manufacturers across Japan. The same question set goes to shochu, craft sake and Japanese wine producers precisely to separate the two.
Where industries differing in method, seasonality and scale return the same result, the method is not the cause. Where a gap appears in sake alone, it comes either from the production system itself or from customs particular to this industry. Comparison is a tool for locating where the cause actually sits.
What to protect, what to change
This survey is not an attempt to question tradition. It is an attempt to tell what should be protected from what merely continues out of inertia, on the same table. On the floor the two are hard to separate, and a debate that cannot separate them makes both sides look dismissive of the other.
At the session on July 7 (Wed) to 9 (Fri), 2027, the findings become the starting point for deciding, with the people who do the work, where the line between the two should fall.
This survey draws on a research framework published by COTEN. COTEN is not involved in the survey, nor in organising SAKE LEADERS SUMMIT 2027. Responsibility for the question design, the reading of primary sources, the analysis and its publication rests entirely with the SLS Committee.
Three layers
We separate what happens on the ground into the production system, the institutions built around it, and the norms that surround both. The layers exist so that what the craft genuinely requires is never mistaken for what has merely always been done.
L1 Production systemThe conditions imposed by the work of making the drink itself: the seasonality of brewing, the hours a day's tasks fall into, equipment, the weight of what is carried, the scale of the site. How far technology and equipment can move these is the question.
What we ask in this layer
- The gap between brewing season and off-season, and the annual calendar
- Early-morning, late-night and consecutive shifts, and why they exist
- Heavy lifting, working at height, heat and humidity, and the state of mechanisation
- Scale of the site (output, headcount) and how work is divided
L2 Organisational institutionsHow each business translates those conditions into rules: forms of employment, how pay is set, evaluation, leave and care responsibilities, and who decides what, where. Two sites with the same production system can have entirely different institutions.
What we ask in this layer
- The mix of permanent, seasonal and agency staff, and any shift to year-round employment
- How pay is set, and how overtime and days off are handled
- Parental and care leave: the rules, and actual take-up
- Titles and decision-making venues (who is in the room)
- Whether written work rules and a harassment contact point exist
L3 NormsThe received ideas nobody writes down: who is held to suit which job, what counts as authentic, how a family business and a company overlap. Change the rules and leave the norms, and the view from the floor stays the same.
What we ask in this layer
- Received ideas about gender and role, folklore included, and how they are handled
- Who may enter the brewing floor, and the reasons given
- Family ownership, household succession, and the expectations attached
- How people who come from outside the industry are received
Traditional industry or newcomer: a second axis
Sake and Japanese wine are both fermented brews, yet they sit differently as industries. Sake is spoken of as a traditional industry and as culture. Japanese wine is an imported culture, sits in a promotion category, and in business terms is closer to a start-up. Shochu and craft sake each occupy their own place along the same axis.
This axis joins the three layers in the analysis, because where norms are not filtered through tradition, gender gaps should show up differently. The question set asks for founding year, how the business was started, how it is governed, and its ties to the region and to industry bodies, so that each respondent's position on the axis is built from their answers rather than assumed from the industry they belong to.
The five steps of the analysisHow the responses get read
Count
Collect employment, hours, the presence of rules and the composition of the workforce as facts, industry by industry. Distribution first, interpretation later.
Sort into layers
Assign each finding to L1 production system, L2 institutions or L3 norms. This is the step that catches conditions long treated as unavoidable consequences of the craft, but which in fact sit in L2 or L3.
Compare industries
Place sake, shochu, craft sake and Japanese wine side by side. Where method and seasonality differ but the result is the same, the cause is not the method. The reverse holds too.
Match organisation against individual
Compare the organisation ballot, answered by the business, with the individual ballot, answered by the people working there. A rule existing and a rule being used are two different things.
Turn it back into options
Sort what can move tomorrow, what needs capital investment and what needs an industry-wide agreement, layer by layer. That is where the session picks up.
The three-layer structure draws on a research framework published by COTEN. What is borrowed is the way of framing; the questions placed in each layer and their interpretation were built independently from primary sources. COTEN is not involved in this survey or in organising SLS2027.
Two ballots
Organisation ballot
One per business, answered by an owner, production manager or administrator.
About 15 minutes
Individual ballot
Anyone working at an alcohol producer: brewing, production, sales or office. Any role, any contract type.
About 10 minutes
The primary sources
This page lists where the primary sources sit. It grows as the reading progresses. Wherever the text cites an industry-wide figure, a footnote gives the source and the date it refers to.
Statistics on the alcohol industry
- 国税庁酒のしおり製成数量・課税移出数量・製造場数の年次統計
- 国税庁清酒製造業の概況清酒製造業者の経営指標・規模別の集計
- 国税庁酒類製造業及び酒類卸売業の概況酒類製造業全体の事業者数・従業者数
Statistics on employment
- 厚生労働省雇用均等基本調査育児休業取得率、女性管理職比率などの事業所調査
- 総務省統計局労働力調査産業別・雇用形態別の就業者数
- 総務省統計局経済センサス（活動調査）産業小分類別の事業所数・従業者数
- 内閣府男女共同参画白書分野別の男女間格差の基礎データ
Brewing technique and practice
- 日本醸造協会日本醸造協会誌製造工程・設備・労働条件に関する技術論文
- 酒類総合研究所酒類総合研究所情報誌・研究報告製造技術および品質に関する研究
Wherever the text cites an industry-wide figure, a footnote gives the source and the date it refers to.
The road to publication
- Oct 2026Survey announced, responses open
- Nov 30, 2026Response deadline
- Dec 2026 to Apr 2027Tabulation, analysis and cross-checking against primary sources
- End of May 2027Preliminary findings published
- Jun 2027Analysis prepared as the ground for the debate
- Jul 7 to 9, 2027SLS2027 runs: the session debates it, and the summing up follows