Once upon a time,

Jikaku-Taishi, the famous monk of the ancient time, was traveling around Japan on foot. One day when he came to Dewa prefecture (current Yamagata pref.) he found the best place to build a new temple in Yamadera area.

Because building the big temple is quit a work, he firstly tried to find good Sake around there (He loved Sake so much. What a monk!). After strolling around for a while he found a small brewery 8 miles away from Yamadera and he loved that Sake so much. He said, " Oh, what a great Sake! This must be the best in Dewa (Yamagata), let's name this "Yamagata Masamune (Yamagata's Sake).".

After that he kept on drinking, and finally build the famous Rishaku-Temple in Yamadera.

That's it for the ancient fantasy, and now let us introduce our history.

Our brewery was founded in 1898, by Yasaku MITOBE (right picture), in Tendo City in Yamagata prefecture. He was a modern boy who liked to wear the western clothes and the long beard.

He started Sake business because he met one master brewer (called "Toji" in Japanese) in the Sino-Japanese War. The Toji strongly recommended to brew Sake after the War because of the pleasure of making it, and maybe because of the money he made. At that time of Japan, of course, almost none of the alcoholic drink was introduced and Japanese Sake was literally "alcoholic drinks" for Japanese people.

First brew was not very good. Yasaku studied hard about how to brew, but making good Sake was too difficult without experience. Therefore he called up the Toji, the old friend in the army, and the next year he finally made it. The Sake was named "Yamagata Masamune", hoping to be the best Sake in Yamagata. It did not take so much time to be well-known in the local area because of the superior brewing skills of Toji and Yasaku's marketing.

Though there was a huge financial risk involved for brewing Sake because they had to buy a lot of rice in advance, it was not possible to buy any insurance for the failure of brewing . So Yasaku brought many young plant trees from Angyo, Saitama prefecture and planted them for security. Fortunately his business became successful, he donated many plant trees to the public. Cherry blossom trees along the Mamigasaki-River, which is famous for "Imoni Festival (Japanese taro potato & meat pot festival) in autumn, are contributed by Yasaku.

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Founder
Yasaku MITOBE

What a beard!
Upon his death, ZZ Top succeeded his beard.