Established by a group of soy sauce breweries in Fukushima Prefecture— Fukushima Soy Sauce Brewing Cooperation. Let’s learn more about its beginnings and Halal-certified ‘Halal Soy Sauce’ straight from the factory manager, Kurebayashi.

The Fukushima Soy Sauce Brewing Cooperation was the first cooperative factory in Japan for KIAGE soy sauce, established in 1964. KIAGE soy sauce, a.k.a “raw soy sauce”, is the liquid part of soy sauce made by pressing the fermented moromi (mixture of soybeans, wheat and salt). The lees and impurities are then filtered out before the product can be distributed.

Fukushima Prefecture houses many small breweries, producing unique soy sauce different from the products of the major manufacturers.
Soy sauce brewers in Fukushima Prefecture got together and formed this cooperation to modernise soy sauce from an industrial perspective, so that Fukushima’s soy sauce can continue its legacy into the future. Together, they built a KIAGE Cooperative Factory. This was at a time when Japan was experiencing rapid economic growth.

The cooperation co-produces freshly KIAGE soy sauce, which each brewery uses to produce their own soy sauce products of varying colours, tastes and aromas. This style is called the ‘Fukushima Method’ and currently 58 soy sauce breweries in the prefecture are members of this cooperation.

While the cooperative’s main role is making KIAGE soy sauce, there are some products processed until the final manufacturing process. One of these products is Halal Soy Sauce certified Halal by the Nippon Asia Halal Association (NAHA).
Halal Soy Sauce was developed in 2016 as Japan began to have many foreign tourists and an increasing number of Muslim tourists.

Using only carefully selected domestic ingredients, this authentic soy sauce is made by simply fire-roasting KIAGE soy sauce without any alcohol or mirin. It has a clean, plain taste well-suited to the tastes of foreign consumers, and available as 20L, 1.8L and 150ml.

In obtaining certification, pig-derived raw materials should not exist in the factory, so we replaced them entirely with plant-derived raw materials. In this process, we paid extra attention to how the flavour changes compared to the previous version. After much trial and error, we successfully managed to commercialise the product. Luckily, there were no other problems in obtaining the certification; everything went smoothly.

Recently, we are delighted to hear from a NAHA auditor that a Halal sushi restaurant in Shibuya is using our Halal Soy Sauce. We even received gratifying requests for more shops to use the Halal Soy Sauce, so we are looking to expand its sales.
Apart from that, there is a ramen shop in Malaysia that also uses our Halal Soy Sauce, along with an order by a university cafeteria for the sake of its Muslim students.

Since inbound activities stopped due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we could not increase the sales of our Halal Soy Sauce as much as we first envisioned. However, we are honoured that we could make a small contribution for Muslims to enjoy Japanese food.

According to a survey conducted by the Japan Tourism Agency on international visitors to Japan, the thing that international visitors look forward to the most in Japan is eating Japanese food.
We would definitely like all Muslims visiting Japan as well to enjoy Japanese food with this Halal Soy Sauce.

< Business Profile >
Company name: Fukushima Soy Sauce Brewing Cooperation
Head office: Minokake-10 Yui, Nihommatsu, Fukushima 969-1404
Business outline: Manufacture and distribution of soy sauce and condiments
Official HP: Fukushima Soy Sauce Brewing Cooperation

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