Categories
Wellness

Amazake: Japan’s 1000-year-old wonder drink

The amazake specialty café “Amanoya” in Suehirocho, Tokyo, abuts an active koji muro (mold cultivation room) built in 1904.

An amazake boom has been underway in Japan, with its market size growing from ¥11.9 billion in 2009 to ¥16.7 billion in 2015 and ¥24.6 billion in 2017 (latest data). (1)

Japanese people drink amazake as a nutritional supplement to prevent heat fatigue in the summer, or as a pick-me-up with breakfast or late in the afternoon.

Amazake (also known as koji amazake) is a non-alcoholic, viscous, white-colored, sweet, traditional Japanese drink, a fermented food made from Aspergillus oryzae and related koji molds. The sweetness of koji amazake is from glucose, derived from starch broken down by the Aspergillus oryzae amylase. Fermenting food results in an improved nutrient composition. Purportedly, koji amazake contains over 300 ingredients in total.

Functionality, amazake is known to include an anti-fatigue effect, bowel movement improvement, a skin barrier function, e.g., improving dry skin, and other effects on human health. These functions result from ingesting approximately 100 mL per day, but human clinical trials have clarified that this amount has no effect on blood glucose levels and weight gain. (2)

Amazake: Functionality, Safety

  References (below)
1Anti-Fatigue Effect3 and 4
2Bowel Movement Improvement5 and 6
3Skin Barrier Function 7
4Safety8 and 9

Source: Ingredients, Functionality, and Safety of the Japanese Traditional Sweet Drink Amazake, (2) Conceptasia, November 2021

Koji amazake has been consumed for a long time, as it appeared in the Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki) compiled in 720. The rice-koji is mixed with water and placed in a tank set at 50–60 °C, where the amylase secreted by A. oryzae breaks down rice starch into glucose.

It is a unique beverage for which the main component is glucose, as compared to other sweet beverages such as fruit juice, for which the main sugars are sucrose and fructose. (2)

References

  1. Fuji Keizai Co. Ltd. Foodstuff Marketing Handbook 2021; 2020; Volume 4, pp. 342–345
  2. Ingredients, Functionality, and Safety of the Japanese Traditional Sweet Drink Amazake, by Atsushi Kurahashi, June 2021
  3. Effect of a late evening snack of Amazake in patients with liver cirrhosis: A pilot study, by Nagao, Y.; Sata, M., 2013
  4. Effects of amazake using rice koji intake in sports athletes on physical fatigue and subjective symptoms during exercise training, by Kashimura, O.; Uehara, Y.; Shimazaki, A., 2019
  5. Effect of Amazake ingestion on constipation, by Sumiyoshi, K.; Nakao, M., 2017
  6. Effects of Koji amazake and its lactic acid fermentation product by Lactobacillus sakei UONUMA on defecation status in healthy volunteers with relatively low stool frequency, by Sakurai, M.; Kubota, M.; Iguchi, A.; Shigematsu, T.; Yamaguchi, T.; Nakagawa, S.; Kurahashi, A.; Oguro, Y.; Nishiwaki, T.; Aihara, K.; et al., 2019
  7. Effect of intake of Amazake on skin barrier functions in healthy adult women subjects—A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, by Ueda, M.; Kitagawa, M.; Koike, S.; Yamamoto, T.; Kondo, S., 2017
  8. Effects and safety of koji amazake: An excessive intake test, by Kurahashi, A.; Yonei, Y., 2019
  9. Safety evaluation of a long-term intake of koji amazake, by Kurahashi, A.; Nakamura, A.; Oguro, Y.; Yonei, Y., 2020

Related posts:

  1. Country Variations in Wellness Priorities Data is a scarce resource in the Wellness industry. The Global Wellness Institute (1) provides the best, most comprehensive data, in our opinion. Other data sources provide insights. For example, Mckinsey & Company provides occasional market insights; the table below coming from a recent paper. (2) The definitions used for...
  2. Japan: From Inbound to Micro Tourism Yoshiharu Hoshino, CEO of Hoshino Resorts, presented under the auspices of the Columbia Business School on 1 April 2021 (Japan time). He described how, under an 18-month survival plan instituted in early 2020, “micro-tourism” customers had increased from under 10% of their facilities’ visitors to over 30%. In the context...
  3. Why meditation apps have struggled in Japan The meditation app subsector has been growing rapidly globally, even before 2020 and the pandemic. The top ten meditation apps had revenues of US$195 million in 2019, up 52% from 2018’s US$128 million. (1) This was the fourth year of rapid growth. The revenues of the top ten meditation apps...
  4. Green tea, Growing in Japan From the convenience of PET bottle green tea to the leisurely traditional tea ceremony, and the specialist green tea shops and casual cafes in between, green tea remains ubiquitous in Japan. Expenditure in Japan on green tea products at ¥11,625 per household in 2019 was a new high (dataset from...

By Peter Eadon-Clarke

Advisor, Conceptasia Inc.
Peter Eadon-Clarke is a specialist in J-Wellness, product and technique trends, wellness tourism and the Stress Check Program. Peter has extensive experience managing complex multicultural teams; roles held during 14 years at Macquarie Capital Securities (Japan) limited included branch manager, global head of economics and Tokyo head of research. Previously, positions included UBS Trust and Banking in Tokyo as chief investment officer, CIO at Sumitomo Life Investment and CIO for the Pacific Basin at GT (now Invesco).