Are There Differences Between Traditional Sake Breweries and Big Sake Companies?

Traditionally Japanese sake breweries produce sake once a year in the fall and finish brewing within the following winter, although nowadays some bigger traditional sake breweries make sake in all seasons. Contrary to the traditional breweries, all large liquor companies make sake all year with high-tech modern equipment. 

Regarding the management of the breweries, in old times, making sake used to be a seasonal job for freelance sake brewers who were farming in spring and summer, and many owners of sake breweries were landowners thus it was no problem for everybody to activate sake breweries once a year. However, this has been changed. Today, most traditional sake breweries became companies and they have sake brewers as their full-time employees although there are still some freelance sake brewers remaining.

Do traditional sake brewing companies have entirely the same system as the other modern companies?
 
Look at the photos above. These are photos of the president’s house in Ishikawa-Shuzo Sake Brewery. Actually this company still keeps a unique old tradition, though it is probably a rare case. The president’s house shown in the photos are located on the company grounds that’s why the wooden board tells “Private Area”. This wouldn’t be so unusual tradition but the rare tradition they keep can be seen on the name plate displayed at the entrance. 

It says “Yahachiro Ishikawa” which is the name of the head of the family and also is the president of the company. Actually the name has been handed down since the beginning of the family history as a landowner. To be more precise, this sake brewing company has kept the same president’s name. It is not the situation which the former president named his son “Jr.”.

The tradition is, after the former president passes away the successor takes over the company and also the "name". He changes his name in all legal registrations and formally becomes “Yahachiro Ishikawa”. Apparently the current president is the 18th “Yahachiro Ishikawa”.

Well, I think there would be some advantages with this tradition. The company doesn’t have to renew the business cards for the president, and the president's name in the company information forever!