Japanese Alcohol Prices Rise Too, With 2,913 Items Affected in 2026
A Teikoku Databank survey finds that 2,913 Japanese alcoholic and soft drink items will rise in price in 2026, counting only those confirmed up to November.
Food price rises top 10,000 items a year for the fifth year running
Teikoku Databank (TDB), a credit research firm headquartered in Tokyo, compiles price revisions by 195 major Japanese food manufacturers every month. According to the July edition, published on 30 June 2026, price rises planned for food and drink between January and November 2026 had already reached 14,902 items by the end of June alone. That is more than 10,000 items for the fifth year in a row since the survey began in 2022, and it also exceeds 2024’s total of 12,520 items, the lowest so far. July alone accounted for 2,566 items, with an average rise of 11% per revision. Note that when the same item is raised in price several times in a year, each rise is counted separately, and that the figures include “effective price rises”, where the price stays the same but the contents are reduced. TDB expects the annual total to land in the 20,000s, similar to the previous year.
From shochu and sake to imported wine: 2,913 alcohol items
By category, “alcoholic and soft drinks” account for 2,913 items. The range is wide: happoshu, a lower-taxed alternative to beer; “third-category beer”, beer-style drinks made with ingredients other than malt; imported wine; shochu; and sake. Shochu is a Japanese distilled spirit made from ingredients such as rice, barley and sweet potato. At the same time, a revision of the Liquor Tax Act has lowered the tax on beer, and some products have been cut in price to reflect this. Within the same alcohol category, then, prices are rising and falling at once.
Behind it all: the Middle East and a weak yen
The most common reason given for price rises was “higher raw material costs” at 92.5%, followed by “logistics costs” at 71.9% and “packaging and materials” at 69.8%. Packaging and materials rose by 10.5 percentage points compared with the same month a year earlier. Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up the price of crude oil and of naphtha, a raw material for plastics, raising the cost of food-grade film, trays and ink. Price rises attributed to the situation in the Middle East make up 24.7% of the total. In addition, the exchange rate has at times passed 160 yen to the dollar, and the weak yen is pushing up import costs. TDB believes manufacturers will have no choice but to pass these higher costs on in their prices for some time yet.
The survey covers products sold for home use within Japan, so it does not directly show retail prices in Europe. Even so, rising costs for bottles, packaging and transport are a challenge shared by Japanese producers. When choosing sake or shochu in Europe, try not to judge by price alone, and take a look at the information on the label too. The rice polishing ratio, for example, shows how much of the rice grain remains after milling; the smaller the number, the more has been polished away. Details like this give a sense of the care that went into the brewing. Rather than sticking to premium ginjo, trying affordable junmai and honjozo sake that suit everyday meals is also a smart way to enjoy sake in an age of rising prices.
Sources
Teikoku Databank, “Survey of price revision trends among 195 major food companies, July 2026” https://www.tdb.co.jp/report/economic/20260630-neage26y07/
Sources
This article was written by The Sake Wire editorial team, summarising the public sources listed above. Images are our own.
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