In Japan, beer is life. Beer is love. In a country where long, high-stress work days are imperative for survival in its many urban sprawls, filling one’s bloodstream with delicious, golden poison at the end of each work day is conducive to not offing yourself in the middle of Aokigahara.
Once a Japanese youth turns the ripe age of 20, he or she is eligible for all the merits of being a drunk ass in the Land of the Rising Sun. Public intoxication is very much legal there, as is public drinking. After the work day ends, and all the big executives go to their Yakuza-sponsored cocaine hovels, salarymen bar crawl and debauch their already piss-poor sense of self worth, slithering in and out of kaiten-zushi and Don Quijote stores, vomiting on vending machines while their buddies shotgun cans of BLACKOUT GOD; and the cycle repeats itself the next night, and you finally understand what Murakami was talking about when he wrote After Dark. It’s true; the Japanese love beer, and imbibing in it is an important and necessary social ritual.
The Japanese government also loves beer. Because, just like with televisions and dogs, they can come up with excuses to tax the shit out of it.
In Japan, beer is taxed according to malt content. Taxation increments are split into four categories: 67 percent malt or higher; 50 to 67 percent malt; 25 to 50 percent; and less than 25 percent. With each descending category, the tax on beer decreases. However, only the first category can legally be called “beer” in Japan.
If a can of beer has less than 67 percent malt content, it is classified as happoshu. Literally translated to “bubbling spirits,” alcoholic beverages that fall into the happoshu category are subjected to smaller tax rates than those of malt-rich beer. The Japanese system of taxing alcohol, which has formally existed since the 1950s, has always worked fairly well for the state. That is, until 1996, when taxes for beer and happoshu increased dramatically.
As if the high price of getting pissed wasn’t enough, Glorious Nippon is also in the middle of a shitty beer epidemic. As a result of the hiked taxes for happoshu, beer companies like Sapporo and Asahi have been pushing drinks with less than 25 percent malt content. This results in weaker viscosity, or “body,” in your beverage. It also means less flavor and a lighter color. Basically, a lower malt content means a weaker, bubblier beer. For the antithesis to this concept, try a pint of Guinness.
The benefit of buying happoshu? It’s cheap. For about one or two dollars you can get your drink on with some alcoholic soda water. Alcohol content stays generally the same between “real” beer and happoshu; for an easy buzz on the way home, one can pick up a Sapporo Draft One (which uses pea protein instead of malt), or perhaps a Magnum Dry, from the local konbini, or convenience store.
Pop the tab, tilt the can back, and treat your gullet to some soapy, sparkling swill.
![It tastes like lukewarm sadness, but you can buy it from a vending machine. Decent trade-off? [photo taken from 360niseko.com]](https://lucashakes.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/happoshu_2011-12-20.jpg)
So will the Japanese ever be able to enjoy decently priced, quality beer? Maybe, if the European Union can convince Japan to change its archaic taxation policy in some upcoming trade talks. Brussels and Tokyo have been engaging in conversations regarding trade restrictions since 2013, and the two economic powerhouses have supposedly been making progress. But Japan does not have a history of flexibility with its internationally incongruous policies. The island nation has always been “Japan first.” Before the will of the global community comes the will of the Japanese people. Nationalism before appeasement is a virtue there, as illustrated by the variety of public officials who, to this day, will downplay the atrocities committed by the Empire during the Pacific campaign of World War II.
So Japan might not back down to Europe. In that regard, Japan is a lot like America.
According to Reuters, Japan’s beer market is the third most profitable in the world, but the majority of that money is only going to domestic producers like Sapporo and Suntory. Foreign beer is sold in Japan, true, but only through “joint ventures allowing local production of premium beers such as Heineken.”
If European beer companies can squeeze their way into the Japanese beer market without having to spend beaucoup bucks on taxes — or having to rebrand their drinks as happoshu — that could mean a change in how Japan defines its favorite beverage.
The Lucas Hakes-Rodriguez Blog 