Hanyu Distillery

The Akuto family held a long tradition in spirit business as they had been in the brewing industry since the 1600s.

Isouji Akuto who is the 19th generation of the Akuto family, turned to whisky production. He founded the Hanyu distillery in 1941 and got a license for alcohol production in 1946. The main production would be blended whisky and only in 1990 the first single malt expression of the distillery was launched.

It was named Chichibu, after the town where the Akuto family was originally producing sake.
The distillery was forced to close in 2000 and in 2004 it was dismantled.

Ichiro Akuto, the grandson of the distillery’s founder, began making whisky with the matured stock of Hanyu distillery, before founding a new distillery in 2008, in Chichibu. It was the first whisky distillery built in Japan, after the 1970s.