A family shochu business at the foot of the Kirishima mountains.

Kurokirishima is the best-known product of Kirishima Shuzo, a sweet-potato shochu maker in Miyakonojo, in the south-west of Miyazaki Prefecture in southern Kyushu. The company’s own timeline says its founder, Enatsu Kichisuke, began making shochu in May 1916 in the Kawahigashi district of Miyakonojo, under the name Kawahigashi Enatsu Shoten. The name “Kirishima” was registered as a trademark in August 1933; Japanese Wikipedia says it comes from Mount Kirishima, the volcanic range on the border between Miyazaki and Kagoshima.

The second generation shaped the modern company. According to the timeline, Enatsu Junkichi took over the family business in August 1945 and became president when it was reorganised as Kirishima Shuzo Co., Ltd. in April 1949. In 1955 the company sank its first well and later named the water Kirishima Rekka-sui; in 1957, it says, Junkichi proposed the term honkaku shochu, “authentic shochu,” at a meeting of Kyushu shochu makers in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto. Japanese Wikipedia adds that a 1962 Ministry of Finance ordinance gave the term official standing. Between 1965 and 1970 the company began using the Koganesengan sweet potato as its raw material.

Growth followed in the 1980s: sales offices in Tokyo (1983), Osaka (1985) and Fukuoka (1988), a paper-pack Kirishima in April 1986 and a second factory, at Shibita in Miyakonojo, completed in October 1986. Enatsu Junko became the third president in April 1996, the year of the company’s 80th anniversary.

A black label that the board kept turning down.

Kurokirishima — “black Kirishima” — is an imo shochu made with black koji rather than the white koji of the original Kirishima. The company’s timeline says it went on sale in June 1998 in Miyazaki Prefecture only and nationwide in May 1999. Japanese Wikipedia credits it with helping to popularise black-koji shochu and gives its catchphrase as “Toro-tto, Kiri-tto,” a pair of onomatopoeic words for a rich, then crisp, taste. Nicknamed “Kurokiri,” it gave its name to the company’s web magazine, Kurokiri Chronicle.

That magazine is the main source for how the label was made, and its account is the company’s own. In an August 2021 article, senior managing director Enatsu Takuzo recalls looking at more than a thousand shochu labels and mocking up about fifty designs built on the character 黒, “black,” without finding the answer. It came, he says, while driving from Miyakonojo towards Miyazaki City: in the Tenjin Tunnel his car navigation screen switched from a white to a black background, and he decided that the existing Kirishima design did not need to change, only to be reversed out in black.

The article lists further details. Kurokirishima put the character 黒 on the shoulder label, which the company says no shochu had carried text on before; fine horizontal parallel lines were added to give depth when the label wrapped the bottle; and the gold lettering on a black ground drew on a black kimono with a gold obi that Enatsu had seen at a kimono shop in Kyoto. The board, the article says, turned the design down three times because black packaging had no precedent in the food industry — he recalls being asked whether they were making a shochu for funerals — and approved it at the fourth meeting, after Enatsu pointed out that a dark tie with gold detailing that the directors had just admired used the same scheme.

The lettering has its own lineage. A November 2023 Kurokiri Chronicle article says the brushed 霧島 logo was written about seventy years earlier by the calligrapher Matsuda Zuika, chosen by Enatsu Junkichi from the work of about ten calligraphers to replace an older lettering style; that the 黒 of Kurokirishima and the 赤 of Akakirishima were brushed by his son, who took the same artist’s name; and that his grandson, Matsuda Zuiun, wrote the characters for the Torafu Kirishima and Shibita factory Kurokirishima Genshu labels, going through some three thousand sheets of paper to match his grandfather’s hand.

Shochu, sweet potatoes and southern Kyushu.

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.

A colour family, a holding company and a 110th anniversary.

Kurokirishima became the centre of a family of shochu named by colour. The company’s timeline lists Akakirishima, “red Kirishima,” made from the purple-fleshed Murasaki-masari sweet potato, in October 2003; Akanekirishima, from the orange-fleshed Tamaakane, in June 2014; and Shirokirishima, “white Kirishima,” the renamed white-koji original, nationwide from January 2015. Later came the cask-aged Kurokirishima MELT in 2017 and, in February 2023, KIRISHIMA No.8, made from a sweet potato the company bred itself.

The company has been reorganised but not sold. Since April 2015, Japanese Wikipedia says, its parent has been Kirishima Holdings, and in June 2025 Enatsu Kuniyasu became the fourth president, according to the timeline. The shochu is made at its Honsha and Shibita factories in Miyakonojo, the company says, and Japanese Wikipedia reports that in 2022 it announced a pause, from February 2023, in some products, including paper-pack Kurokirishima, because a sweet-potato disease had made raw material hard to secure.

Its name is also visible beyond the bottle. Japanese Wikipedia lists television advertising with a long run of actors and musicians, a shogi tournament and naming rights at sports grounds, including the Miyakonojo park renamed Kirishima Shuzo Sports Land Miyakonojo in April 2025. The company says it supplied shochu to Academy Awards celebrations, for a third year running in 2018, and for its 110th anniversary in May 2026 it released a two-bottle set designed with the Arita porcelain kiln of Inoue Manji and his grandson Inoue Yuki.

For a design guide, Kurokirishima shows how a mass-market brand can make one colour its name: the label keeps the old brushed lettering and reverses everything else into black and gold. Compare iichiko, Sanwa Shurui’s barley shochu, and Satsuma Shiranami, a sweet-potato shochu from Kagoshima. For this guide we use black, gold and a washi off-white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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