An awamori house in Okinawa’s capital.

Kumesen is an awamori made in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, by Kumesen Shuzo (久米仙酒造). The company gives its founding date as 19 November 1952, both on its website and in a November 2020 press release marking its 68th anniversary. Japanese Wikipedia says it began in Naha’s Ōmichi district; its head office is now in Nakaima, in the south of the city, and the company’s recruitment pages place its awamori and whisky production there.

The name is shared with a different distiller. Kumejima, an island west of Okinawa’s main island, is home to Kumejima’s Kumesen (久米島の久米仙), and Japanese Wikipedia describes the two as entirely separate companies. The Kumejima firm, formerly Nakazato Shuzo, took its present name in 1993, the Ryukyu Shimpo reported in 2021; Japanese Wikipedia says it added “Kumejima’s” because a Kumesen was already being made in Naha. This guide is about the Naha company.

Kumesen Shuzo was run by its founding family for more than six decades. Its representative director, Higa Yoichi, writes on the company website that the business was founded by Taira Shozo and led by a second-generation head of the Taira family before he took over as the third head in 2016. He says he joined as an employee in 1994 and, about eight months later, was sent on his own to manage the company’s plant at Ulanhot, in China’s Inner Mongolia, travelling between Okinawa and Inner Mongolia for the next ten years. The company calls that plant the awamori industry’s first overseas production base; Japanese Wikipedia dates a Mongolian-made awamori, Kyoten, to 1995.

The Green Bottle, Yattaruzo and a turn to whisky.

Japanese Wikipedia’s timeline gives the outline of the range. In 1968 the company set up a sales arm, Ryukyu Shuhan, to open up the market on Japan’s main islands. In 1978 it launched the Kumesen Green Bottle, a tabletop bottle, and in 1989 Yattaruzo (奴樽蔵), an awamori stored in oak casks. For the Green Bottle’s 30th anniversary, on Awamori Day in November 2007, it reworked the blend with aged awamori, and later additions included an awamori coffee liqueur in 2008 and an awamori made with ume vinegar in 2010.

The company describes its own methods in some detail. It says it uses Indica rice, as awamori makers traditionally do, and has moved from the broken rice it once used to whole grains of table-quality rice; all of the rice is turned into black koji, the mould it credits for awamori’s sweetness and aroma. It also makes a “Nihon Awamori” from Hinohikari rice grown around Kikuchi in Kumamoto Prefecture, and says it once produced Shima Omoi, an awamori sold by Asahi Breweries, under contract.

In recent years the company’s public face has shifted towards whisky. Its Okinawa Island Blue is a whisky made from rice, and the company runs shops and bars under the Okinawa Blue name: at Naha Airport since June 2022, on Heiwa-dori since May 2023 and on Ichiba-hondori since July 2024, it says, plus a bar in Shinbashi, Tokyo. A May 2024 press release carried by the Ryukyu Shimpo listed whisky collaborations including Dragon Blue, produced by the actor Takeuchi Riki; a rice whisky with Tsubakuro, the Yakult Swallows’ mascot; and a Godzilla edition of Okinawa Blue.

The same release described Awamori Gacha, lucky-dip boxes of awamori from other Okinawan distilleries, then in its sixth edition with eight distilleries from central and southern Okinawa; earlier editions had cut across the whole industry and then focused on Miyako, Ishigaki and the Yanbaru forests of the north. The 2024 release also named Ken’s Choice Nature Okinawa Blue, made with the bourbon specialist Matsuyama Ken, among its partnerships. In 2020, the company said, it made high-strength alcohol for disinfection during the pandemic and launched a base for shikuwasa sours, using the Okinawan citrus.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are Japanese shochu and awamori names: Kurokirishima, Satsuma Shiranami, Mitake, Mori Izo, Kannoko, Zuisen and Kumesen. Shochu is Japan’s native distilled spirit, and Japanese Wikipedia describes it by its main ingredient: sweet potato, barley, rice, buckwheat or brown sugar among others. Sweet-potato, or imo, shochu is made mainly in Kagoshima and Miyazaki in southern Kyushu, and in Kagoshima it is registered under the geographical indication “Satsuma shochu.” Barley, or mugi, shochu is made widely, including in Oita, home of iichiko. Awamori is the spirit of the Ryukyu Islands: made from rice with black koji and distilled once in a pot still, and called kusu when it has been stored for three years or more.

The makers are mostly regional companies tied to a single town. Kurokirishima comes from Kirishima Shuzo of Miyakonojo in Miyazaki, whose origins Japanese Wikipedia dates to 1916. Satsuma Shiranami and the oak-aged barley shochu Kannoko are both made by Satsuma Shuzo of Makurazaki, at the southern tip of the Satsuma Peninsula. Mitake is made on the island of Yakushima by Mitake Shuzo, which began there in 1958; Mori Izo is made by Mori Izo Shuzo in Tarumizu, Kagoshima. In Okinawa, Zuisen Shuzo has made awamori in Shuri, now part of Naha, since 1887, and Kumesen is an Okinawan awamori name.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its shochu or awamori is made and how its labels and bottles have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Characters, collaborations and a motto.

Kumesen Shuzo’s visual voice today is built around collaborations and characters. In October 2026 the company’s blog presented a Bikkuriman edition of Okinawa Island Blue whose label and gift box feature Shisa Zeus, a character combining Okinawa’s guardian lion-dog, the shisa, with Bikkuriman’s Super Zeus, first drawn for the company in August 2024. The same month its online shop sold a Halloween mystery box fronted by the company’s own mascot, Awamon. Its website sets text in Noto Sans JP. In September 2025 the company announced Sunset Reserve, a new whisky it presented as a sunset bottled, and its site now gives the Okinawa Island Blue and Sunset Reserve whiskies their own pages alongside its awamori.

The company states its aim as “a step-ahead awamori-making that creates a rich present and future,” a motto it says it inherited from its founder, and the company lists its head office in Naha and a branch office in Tokyo.

For a design guide, Kumesen shows how a postwar awamori house can carry a heritage spirit and a new whisky line under one name, using characters and partnerships rather than a single fixed look. Compare Zuisen, an awamori maker in Shuri, and iichiko, a barley shochu from Oita. For this guide we use bottle green, island blue and coral white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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