One of the three Shuri districts licensed to distil.

Zuisen is an awamori, the rice spirit of Okinawa, made by Zuisen Shuzo in Sakiyama-chō, in Shuri, the old royal capital that is now part of the city of Naha. The company says it was founded on 1 May 1887 by Kyan Kōei (喜屋武幸永), the third son of a family of shochu makers in Sakiyama, and that he gave the awamori its name. Sakiyama was one of three Shuri districts, with Akata and Torihori, known together as the Shuri Sanka, where the company says the Ryukyu royal government allowed awamori to be made, under strict control, to keep its quality high. Japanese Wikipedia gives the same founding year and the business’s first name, the Kyan distillery.

The company’s timeline traces what followed. In October 1935 the distillery was renamed 佐久本政敦酒造場, taking the Sakumoto name it still carries. In 1944 production stopped because rice could no longer be obtained, and the air raid of 10 October that year devastated Naha and Shuri. Distilling resumed in October 1951, and the timeline also marks Okinawa’s return to Japanese rule in May 1972. In February 1957 the business became a limited partnership, Zuisen Shuzō Kōjō, and in 1971 the joint-stock company Zuisen Shuzo. The company names Manabu Sakumoto (佐久本学) as its representative today, and it remains in Sakiyama.

Later entries record a storehouse at Nakasebaru in Haebaru in 1976, a Tokyo sales office in 2000, a first shipment to New York in 2002, and new brewing buildings at the Nakasebaru site in 2000 and 2004.

A spring, a dragon spout and a lost koji.

The name comes from water. The company says the founder named his awamori after the Zuisen spring, which rises beside the stone steps up to the second gate of Shuri Castle. Its water runs from a spout shaped like a dragon’s head, so it is commonly called the Ryūhi, the “dragon spout,” and inscribed stones around it praise it in phrases such as “first in Chūzan” and “the source is far, so the stream is long.” The company says the name expressed a wish for a spirit as clear as the spring and for a tradition that would be handed down for generations. Japanese Wikipedia links the name to the same spring, beside the castle’s Zuisenmon gate.

The brand’s best-known story concerns a lost black koji. Awamori is fermented with black koji mould. Niigata Prefecture’s sake website says that the Pacific War left Shuri’s distilleries in ruins and Okinawa’s own black koji strains were wiped out, but that the fermentation scientist Kin’ichirō Sakaguchi had collected koji from breweries around the country before the war, including from Okinawa, and that the samples survived, freeze-dried, at the University of Tokyo. The Niigata tourism association dates his Okinawa collecting to 1935 and the strain’s return to 1998. The company says it learned in June 1998 that its pre-war strain, which it calls the Zuisen-kin, was preserved there, brought it back to Okinawa in December 1998, revived distillation with it in June 1999 and released Usaki (御酒), an awamori made with it. The Sakaguchi Memorial Museum in Jōetsu, Niigata, which honours the scientist, sells it, and the tourism association’s blog says it is also sold at the University of Tokyo’s co-op. The company describes Usaki on its website as a one-of-a-kind awamori whose fermentation succeeded “miraculously” with the koji kept in Tokyo.

Other lines named by the company include the Omoro series of long-aged kusu, or vintage awamori, which its website lists in 18- and 21-year versions and which Japanese Wikipedia describes as aged in clay jars for between 10 and 21 years; Zuisen King; Shō ZUISEN, a triple-distilled awamori launched in 2019; and Zuisen Blue, made with deep-sea water and launched in 2016. The company says it also makes plum liqueur and liqueurs using passion fruit and the Okinawan citrus kābuchī.

Shochu and awamori.

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.

Named for a spring at Shuri Castle.

Zuisen’s identity is tied to the castle district. On its website the company places the distillery about fifteen minutes’ walk from Shureimon and two minutes from Keiseimon, on the Baba street it calls Zuisen-dōri, and it notes that the castle’s main buildings burned on 31 October 2019 and are being restored. Its pages on Shuri describe the Tamaudun royal tombs and the Kinjō-chō stone-paved road, and it runs a shop and tours at the distillery.

The two characters of the name, 瑞泉, read as an “auspicious spring,” and the company’s account of the brand stays close to that image: the spring’s clarity, the inscriptions around it and the hope that the awamori, like the stream, would run on for generations. The Usaki story adds a second thread, linking the Shuri distillery to a laboratory in Tokyo and to a museum in Niigata.

For a design guide, Zuisen shows how a single place, a spring at a castle gate, can carry a brand for more than a century. Compare Kumesen, another Okinawan awamori, and iichiko, Sanwa Shurui’s barley shochu from Ōita. For this guide we use vermilion, spring blue, jar clay and limestone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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