About the film

THE SPIRIT OF JAPAN is an intimate documentary about the Wakamatsu family, who have been distilling sweet potato shochu at Yamatozakura Distillery in Kagoshima since the 1850s. The film follows Tekkan Wakamatsu, a fifth-generation toji (master brewer), as he inherits the distillery from his father and charts the future of the family's signature shochu.

With rare access inside the distillery and the family home, the film captures what it takes to make shochu by hand at small scale — the time, the accumulated knowledge, the family history behind every batch — in a growing global market that rewards speed and volume.