As Japan's domestic soy sauce market contracts, long-established Fuki Soy Sauce is attracting inbound visitors by offering free factory tours at Kinbue Soy Sauce Park and expanding opportunities to learn about traditional soy sauce production. Tours are also available in English, and participation by overseas visitors is increasing.
Kinbue Soy Sauce Park, operated by a soy sauce brewery with 237 years of tradition dating back to the Edo period, offers visitors the opportunity to learn about traditional Japanese soy sauce production through free factory tours. Participants can experience processes found nowhere else, including brewing in wooden vats and the fermentation process.
Tours are also available in English, and a group of tourists from Hawaii took part that day. After the tour, visitors can enjoy meals using soy sauce and go shopping. Traditional soy sauce is characterized by a maturation process lasting approximately 1 to 3 years.
Fuki Soy Sauce Park is presented as a traditional brewery with roots dating back to the Edo period. It is expanding sales by preserving its long-established production methods while responding to demand from overseas visitors.
The initiative is positioned as a new customer-acquisition strategy amid the continuing contraction of the domestic market. Attention is expected to focus in subsequent reports on trends in visitor numbers and developments among overseas visitors.