A wine shop in Osaka and a sweet red wine named for the sun.

Suntory began as a shop in Osaka. On 1 February 1899, Japanese Wikipedia says, Shinjiro Torii opened Torii Shoten in the city’s Nishi ward to make and sell grape wine; English Wikipedia describes it as a store selling imported wines. In September 1906 the business was renamed Kotobukiya Yoshuten, and on 1 December 1921 it became the joint-stock company Kotobukiya.

Its first big success was a sweet wine. In April 1907 Torii launched Akadama Port Wine; akadama means “red ball,” a byname for the sun, and Japanese Wikipedia says the wine sold remarkably well. In 1973 it was renamed Akadama Sweet Wine, after restrictions on using the word “port” outside Portugal, English Wikipedia says. In the 1930s the company invested in Japanese vineyards to stop relying on imported base wine from Spain and Chile, and its Shiojiri plant and Yamanashi farm, both from 1936, are still its own wineries, Japanese Wikipedia says; the Yamanashi estate is now the Tomi no Oka winery.

Torii then turned to whisky. Japanese Wikipedia says Masataka Taketsuru, who had studied whisky-making in Scotland, joined the company in June 1923, and that land for a distillery at Yamazaki in Shimamoto, Osaka prefecture, was bought on 1 October 1923. Building began that month and finished on 11 November 1924, when distilling began, Japanese Wikipedia says, citing a 2024 book by the Whisky Culture Institute and the company. The company calls Yamazaki Japan’s first malt whisky distillery. In April 1929 Kotobukiya released Suntory Whisky Shirofuda (“white label”), which Japanese Wikipedia calls Japan’s first authentic whisky and the first product to carry the Suntory name; it was renamed Suntory White in 1964. Taketsuru left in 1934 and went on to found Nikka. A whisky first sold in 1937 as Suntory Whisky 12-year became Kakubin, the “square bottle,” and Torys whisky followed in 1946.

Sun plus Torii, a famous poster and an advertising department of writers.

The name joins two words. English and Japanese Wikipedia agree that “Suntory” comes from sun, for the red sun of Akadama, and Tory, an anglicised form of Torii. Japanese Wikipedia, citing a television interview with a company president broadcast in 2018, says the name was meant as thanks to the wine the business was built on, and that stories reading it as “Torii-san” reversed are wrong. The word appeared first on the 1929 whisky; the company took it as its own name on 1 March 1963, the same year it opened the Musashino brewery in Fuchu, Tokyo, and returned to beer with Suntory Beer.

Advertising has been part of the brand from the start. Japanese Wikipedia, citing the advertising journal Kokoku Hihyo in 1996, says Torii himself loved advertising, and that before the war the Akadama advertisements of Kataoka Toshiro, a Kotobukiya advertising chief, became famous. English Wikipedia, citing the Sankei Shimbun’s western edition, says Kataoka directed a 1922 Akadama poster shot in Osaka with the opera actress Emiko Matsushima, which the newspaper called Japan’s first nude poster.

After the war, the novelist Kaiko Takeshi, the writer Yamaguchi Hitomi and the illustrator Yanagihara Ryohei all worked in the company’s advertising department, Japanese Wikipedia says; they later moved to the group’s creative agency, Sun-Ad, and edited Yoshu Tengoku, a PR magazine published from April 1956 to January 1963 for regulars of Torys bars. In 1961 Kotobukiya ran a prize campaign under the line “Drink Torys and go to Hawaii,” at a time when, English Wikipedia notes, a trip abroad was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The corporate mark has changed with the company. Japanese Wikipedia says that before February 1963 its credit was an oval reading “Kotobukiya, Western spirits,” followed by an oval with the name Suntory in katakana; a later logo was built on the character 響 (hibiki, “resonance”) for the idea of resonating with people and nature, and that mark still appears on the caps of its whisky bottles. Today’s corporate message is “Mizu to ikiru,” “living with water,” and the logo uses a water motif in a light water blue, Japanese Wikipedia says, citing the company.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all drink and sweet names from Japan: Kirin, Suntory, Pocari Sweat, Mitsuya Cider, Fujiya, Kabaya and Yamazaki. Japanese drink and sweet brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food and drink groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a vending machine or convenience store to a supermarket shelf.

A drink or sweet brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the drink, snack or treat it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family company, a holding structure and a global spirits arm.

Suntory has stayed in the founding family. Japanese Wikipedia says about 90% of Suntory Holdings is owned by Kotobuki Realty, the asset company of the Torii and Saji families; English Wikipedia puts the figure at 89.5%. The Saji name entered the line when Torii’s second son, Keizo Saji, was adopted into the Saji family, relatives by marriage, Japanese Wikipedia says; he succeeded his father as president in 1961 and served until 1990. His son Nobutada Saji led the company from 2001 to 2014, followed by Takeshi Niinami from 2014. In March 2025 Torii’s great-grandson Nobuhiro Torii became president, English Wikipedia says.

The modern group took shape in 2009. Suntory Holdings was set up on 16 February and became the holding company on 1 April, with the drinks, food and wine businesses placed in separate companies. That July, Kirin and Suntory announced talks on combining; Suntory announced on 8 February 2010 that they had ended, and Japanese Wikipedia says the parties could not agree on terms including the founding family’s share. The same year Suntory bought Orangina-Schweppes of France and the energy-drink maker Frucor. On 2 July 2013 its drinks and food arm, Suntory Beverage & Food, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while the parent stayed private; in 2013 it also bought GlaxoSmithKline’s drinks business, with Lucozade and Ribena. In 2011 it formed a joint venture with Indonesia’s PT GarudaFood to make soft drinks, holding 51%.

The largest step came in 2014, when Suntory bought Beam, the maker of Jim Beam, and renamed it Beam Suntory; Japanese Wikipedia dates completion to 1 May 2014, Japan time. In May 2024 Beam Suntory became Suntory Global Spirits, with a new website and visual identity. In Japan the group makes whisky at Yamazaki in Osaka prefecture and at Hakushu in Yamanashi, and its head office remains in Osaka, in the Dojimahama district. Its cultural side, built up under Keizo Saji, includes Suntory Hall, a concert hall in Tokyo, and the Suntory Museum of Art, known for its glass collection.

For a design guide, Suntory shows how a name built from a sweet wine’s red sun and a founder’s surname can stretch from a 1899 Osaka shop to a group that owns bourbon, Scotch and French soft-drink brands. Compare Kirin, its long-time beer rival, and Garudafood, its Indonesian joint-venture partner. For this guide we use a water blue, a deep water navy and an Akadama red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Suntory’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.