2026 SEP | A Japanese View from America | Pacific Research Institute | One Cup of Warm Sake — Sushi and Sake as an “Omiki-Tokkuri”
By Tato Takahama
Pacific Research Institute
September 30, 2026
On November 1, Los Angeles will host the 2026 Sushi & Sake Festival at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Los Angeles Downtown.
Organized by the Japanese Restaurant Association of America (JRA), the festival will bring together sushi, sashimi, sake, shochu, Japanese beer and other elements of Japanese food culture. Sushi chefs from Sushi Gen and Katsu-ya Group will prepare sushi on site, while the program will also include cultural performances and a “Shochu Rising Fair.”
According to the JRA, the festival began in 2000 as the JRA Annual Japanese Food Festival. As Japanese cuisine became more familiar and popular in America, the event evolved into what is now the Sushi & Sake Festival, a showcase for new trends in Japanese food and beverages.
In a sense, the history of this festival mirrors the history of Japanese food in America.
Thinking about it brought me back to a question I have been asking myself:
When did Americans begin drinking sake? And why did the Japanese word “sake” become part of the English language itself?
I began thinking about those questions while talking with Atsuko Kanai, executive vice president of Mutual Trading, about the history of sake in America.
Atsuko is the eldest daughter of Toshitoshi Kanai, who led Mutual Trading for many years and helped shape the company’s business philosophy. She has carried that philosophy forward as executive vice president and has been deeply involved, in particular, in importing and selling sake in the United States.
At one point, Atsuko recalled how sake used to be served in America.
“Warm sake,” she said.
Those two words stayed with me.
Today, Americans can choose from an extraordinary range of sake: chilled sake, ginjo, junmai, sparkling sake and much more. The Sushi & Sake Festival itself is evidence of how far the culture has expanded. It is no longer simply about sushi and sake. Shochu and Japanese beer are also part of the experience, along with a broader celebration of Japanese food culture.
But there was a much simpler time.
For many Americans, the places where they first encountered sake were limited. One of the most important was the Japanese restaurant.
An American walks into a Japanese restaurant and orders sushi. A small ceramic flask is placed on the table.
“What’s that?”
“Sake.”
For more than a few Americans, that may have been the beginning of their relationship with sake.
In March 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported that Southern California alone had about 700 sushi bars. As sushi became increasingly popular, the newspaper noted that the businesses selling soy sauce, rice and sake were benefiting as well.
Five years later, in 1990, the newspaper reported that there were more than 3,000 sushi and Japanese restaurants across the United States, including more than 800 in the Los Angeles area and about 400 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even more revealing was another figure: surveys showed that roughly 80 percent of the sake consumed in the United States was purchased at Japanese restaurants.
In other words, sake appeared before many Americans alongside sushi.
Then something remarkable happened.
Sake stopped being simply a Japanese product imported into America.
In 1989, Americans consumed about 1.8 million gallons of sake. Some 61 percent was already being produced domestically.
One of the pioneers of sake brewing on the U.S. mainland was Take Numano.
In 1976, Numano began brewing sake in Berkeley, California, using a former dairy plant. Given exchange rates and transportation costs, producing sake in America for the American market made economic sense.
In 1993, the Los Angeles Times called Numano the “father of United States sake.”
Others followed.
Ozeki began brewing in Hollister in 1979. Takara was producing sake in Berkeley by the early 1980s. American Pacific Rim began production in Vernon, near Los Angeles, in late 1988. In 1990, Hakusan opened a sake brewery in Napa.
More Americans were eating sushi. More were drinking sake. And more people were making sake in America.
Sake was no longer simply “Japanese sake imported into America.”
In 2001, the first U.S. National Sake Appraisal was held in Honolulu. America was developing institutions of its own for tasting, judging and learning about sake.
In 2004, the Joy of Sake held its first New York event. Serious sake tasting and appreciation were becoming part of the American food and beverage landscape.
The American sake story continued to evolve.
Brooklyn Kura was founded in Brooklyn in 2018. In 2021, it began a partnership with Hakkaisan. The brewery also established the Sake Studies Center, which describes itself as the first sake school in the United States attached to a working sake brewery.
Then, in 2025, Brooklyn Kura exported sake made in America to Japan.
It was the first U.S. sake producer to do so, according to The Japan Times. The initial shipment included three varieties, and the export was made possible through Brooklyn Kura’s continuing partnership with Hakkaisan.
By then, the story of sake was no longer a one-way journey from Japan to America.
Japanese sake came to America.
Americans drank it.
Americans learned to make it.
And sake made in America began making its way back to Japan.
At the beginning of that story, however, there is still sushi.
There is a Japanese expression that seems particularly appropriate here: omiki-tokkuri.
Literally, omiki-tokkuri refers to a matching pair of sake flasks placed before a Shinto altar. Over time, the expression came to describe two people who are almost always together — especially a close couple.
Perhaps sushi and sake became something like an omiki-tokkuri in America.
Of course, it would be too simple to say that sushi “brought” sake to America. Sake has a much older history in Hawaii. By 1889, it was already available there as a luxury Japanese import, and sake brewing began in Honolulu in 1908.
Still, for many Americans on the mainland, the Japanese restaurant was certainly one of the most familiar gateways to sake.
You ordered sushi.
There was sake beside it.
“What is that?”
“Sake.”
And from that small flask, a long American story began.
That is why Atsuko Kanai’s memory of warm sake is more than a recollection of the past.
Behind that cup of warm sake was a Japanese restaurant filled with Americans discovering something new. There were importers who brought sake across the Pacific. Then came people who learned to brew it in America. Eventually, sake made in America crossed the Pacific in the opposite direction.
Sushi and sake.
Two Japanese traditions arrived in America, found each other there, and became something close to an omiki-tokkuri — a pair that seemed to belong together.
On November 1, Los Angeles will celebrate the two together.
People will eat sushi, drink sake, taste shochu and enjoy Japanese food culture.
It is more than a food festival.
What began in 2000 as an effort by the JRA to promote Japanese food and culture has become a gathering where Americans and others can experience Japanese food and sake as part of everyday life. In that transformation, we can see the larger story of Japanese food in America.
There was a time when “warm sake” was simply what sake meant.
Today there is ginjo, junmai, sparkling sake and much more.
Americans no longer simply drink sake imported from Japan.
They drink sake made in America — and some of that sake is now being exported back to Japan.
A memory of one cup of warm sake turns out to reflect the larger history of sake in America.
Sake did not simply travel from Japan to America.
Americans drank it. Americans learned to brew it. They made it part of their own food culture. And now some of that American-made sake is making its way back to Japan.
Like an omiki-tokkuri, sushi and sake have traveled together in America.
So if you find yourself holding a small sake flask at the festival on November 1, it may be worth pausing for a moment.
Where did this cup come from?
Was the sake brewed in Japan?
Was it made in America?
And how much of that long history are we, as we drink it, now a part of?
One cup of warm sake.
In that small cup is more than a drink. There is half a century of cultural exchange between Japan and America.
【References】
Charles Hillinger, “Raw Fish Delicacy: Americans Belly Up to the Sushi Bar,” Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1985.
Charles Hillinger, “Sake: As American as California Wine,” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1990.
Iris Yokoi, “A Wine That’s Found Its Time: Vernon Sake Maker Profits from Brewing Popularity of Drink,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1993.
Michael James Leineweber, “Sake in America,” Foods & Food Ingredients Journal of Japan, Vol. 212, No. 9, 2007.
National Sake Appraisal, “2001 National Sake Appraisal.”
Sake Studies Center at Brooklyn Kura, “About.”
The Japan Times, “New York’s Brooklyn Kura becomes first U.S. sake exporter to Japan,” March 28, 2025.
Hakkaisan, “Brooklyn Kura × Hakkaisan: NY-born ‘SAKE’ Now Available in Japan,” March 27, 2025.
『精選版 日本国語大辞典』「御神酒徳利」.
The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cultural News.
Note: English translation was prepared by the author. Translation assistance tools may have been used.
2026 SEP | A Japanese View from America | PRI | 一杯の熱燗から――寿司と日本酒は「お神酒徳利」だった