群馬県

Gunma

Rice terraces in Minakami. Long, narrow flooded paddies planted with rice seedlings rise in tiers up the slope; in the far fields a few people bend over their work — Terraced rice fields in Minakami Town. Seedlings have been planted in the flooded paddies.みなかみ町／ CC BY 4.0 ／ Wikimedia Commons（resized to 1280 px on the long side）

Sake in Gunma

Gunma Prefecture lies almost in the center of the Japanese archipelago and does not face the sea. Mountains line its western and northern borders, and the Kanto Plain opens out in the southeast. In the one year from July 2024 to June 2025, sake was made at 16 places in the prefecture. Breweries in the prefecture make their sake with the well water, underground water and spring water of their own areas.

In January 2021, sake made in Numata City in the north of the prefecture and in the villages of 片品, 川場 and 昭和 and Minakami Town in Tone District was designated as “Tone Numata” under the geographical indication (GI) system, which protects the names of sake-producing regions. It covers not the whole prefecture but only this one city, one town and three villages. Its condition is a taste with a sense of clarity in which a moderate umami can be felt. The area is known for river terraces formed from sediment that settled in 古沼田湖, a lake that existed about 150,000 years ago. Rain and snow that fall on mountains such as 谷川岳 become soft water as they pass through the layers of sand and mud that settled on the lakebed. The harsh winter cold also makes the area well suited to sake brewing.

Rice and yeast (the microorganism that carries out fermentation) have been developed by the prefecture. The Gunma Sake Brewers Association, the prefecture's Agricultural Technology Center and the Gunma Industrial Technology Center worked together to develop “舞風,” a rice variety suited to sake brewing (shuzo kotekimai) born in the prefecture; yeasts developed by the prefecture such as “Gunma KAZE yeast”; and a sake, also called “舞風,” brewed with Gunma's water. Gunma KAZE yeast was put into practical use in 2002 as the prefecture's own yeast for making ginjo-shu (sake made by polishing away the outer 40% or more of the rice grain and adding a small amount of brewer's alcohol) and other sake. In 2019, the prefecture's Industrial Technology Center and the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology jointly developed a new yeast suited to export.

Brewery map

Breweries by municipality (dot size shows the number of breweries)Featured breweries

Ryujin Shuzo 龍神酒造Tatebayashi

The 27 breweries on our list are grouped by the municipality where they are located. Each dot marks a representative point of the municipality, not the brewery itself (featured breweries are shown at their actual locations). Locations are based on the address search of the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan.

Featured breweries

Ryujin Shuzo 龍神酒造尾瀬の雪どけ / Ryujin 龍神TatebayashiRead the article