Hello to everyone who loves sake.

I’m grateful, and I also find it fascinating and amazing, that no matter where you are, we can all be connected through nihonshu.

When I gather information to write an article, there is something I come to realize.

We live in an age where we have greater access to information than at any other time in history.

If you ask AI such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity a question, information scattered across the internet can be gathered, organized, and presented neatly in front of you within a minute.

Even an interview with a toji, the head brewer of a brewery, published in The Asahi Shimbun, or an interview conducted by Reuters overseas or a sake-related media outlet, can be quickly summarized and translated for you.

Because of this, if you want to, you can easily find almost any kind of official information.

But I can say this with confidence: information obtained this way often lacks depth.

Personal stories go much deeper.

There is a difference between reading a news report or an article about a man who won the lottery, and hearing the story directly from the man himself—how he felt when he went to buy the ticket, what he felt the moment he realized he had won, and what happened as he made his way to collect the prize money.

Nihonshu is no different.

Compared to the information scattered across the internet, the personal stories that the editors of a specialized nihonshu magazine hear directly from a kuramoto through an interview have much more depth—and they resonate with us in a completely different way.

The more personal a story is, the deeper it becomes, and the more strongly it can resonate with someone’s heart.