Kirishima Yokogawa Distillery (霧島横川蒸留所) in Kagoshima Prefecture will release its first single malt whisky, Kirishima 531 (霧島 531), through its own online shop on August 30, 2026. The bottle is the debut spirit from a shochu producer that has made shochu for more than 75 years and only began distilling whisky in 2023.
The distillery is run by At Star Co., Ltd. (アットスター株式会社), and the “531” in the name refers to May 31, 2023, the date the company’s whisky manufacturing license finally came through after more than two years of applications. Kirishima 531 is bottled at 53.1% ABV in 700ml bottles, priced at 13,500 yen, and matured in a mix of mizunara, sherry, and red wine casks. At Star says the number is meant to preserve “the determination not to forget” the passion and support that carried the project through its early, uncertain years.
At Star has described its move into whisky as a response to Japan’s long decline in domestic shochu consumption, saying it wants to use decades of distilling experience to make Kagoshima a name associated with whisky as well as shochu. The company converted existing shochu equipment and used crowdfunding to help cover roughly 500 million yen in equipment costs, and spent more than two years documenting production procedures and passing inspections before the license was granted. Whisky is now matured at two sites with different climates: the inland, higher-elevation Yokogawa plant and a coastal warehouse at Kokubu Shikine that gets sea breeze, a deliberate strategy to build a range of maturation character within one brand.
Why this matters beyond Japan
Kirishima Yokogawa is one of a growing number of Japanese shochu and sake breweries repurposing their stills and know-how for whisky as shochu sales soften at home, a trend also visible in Kagoshima at Kanosuke (嘉之助), built by another local shochu maker. For international readers, the appeal is less about this one limited bottle — Kirishima 531 is sold only through the distillery’s Japanese-language shop, with no international shipping confirmed — and more about the pattern behind it: legacy shochu producers becoming a durable new source of single malt entrants, adding to Kagoshima’s profile among whisky travelers already drawn to Kanosuke’s distillery tours.
Why this matters
At Star’s brewery in Kirishima has made shochu since 1949, building its name on the all-sweet-potato shochu “Ran” (蘭) long before anyone there thought about whisky. The pivot was defensive as much as ambitious: Japan’s domestic shochu market has been shrinking for years, and At Star has said openly that it wants decades of distilling know-how to give Kagoshima a second identity, as a whisky region, rather than watch shochu demand keep declining with nothing to replace it. Naming the debut bottle “531” after the exact date its manufacturing licence was approved, after more than two years of paperwork and roughly 500 million yen in converted shochu equipment, says as much about how hard the licence was to get as it does about the whisky inside the bottle.
At Star is not acting alone. Kagoshima is Japan’s historic “shochu kingdom,” home to well over a hundred shochu breweries, and a cluster of them, including Kanosuke in nearby Hioki and Mars Tsunuki further south, have converted shochu stills and warehouses into whisky operations over the past decade as shochu sales softened nationally. Several of these shochu-rooted producers have since formed a joint “Kagoshima Whisky Trail” to promote the prefecture internationally as a whisky destination, not just a shochu one. Kirishima Yokogawa’s two-site maturation strategy, an inland highland warehouse at Yokogawa and a sea-breeze coastal site at Kokubu Shikine, is this same generation of entrants trying to build a distinct house character quickly, rather than waiting decades the way the first wave of Japanese malt distilleries did.
For readers outside Japan
Kirishima 531 is not currently set up for international buyers. At Star sells it only through its own Japanese-language online shop, payment and shipping are built around domestic Japanese addresses, and the distillery has not announced an export plan, an overseas distributor, or English-language ordering. Readers outside Japan should not expect to order this specific bottle directly; treat any third-party listing claiming otherwise with caution until At Star confirms international shipping itself. At 13,500 yen for a 700ml bottle, it is also priced for the domestic collector market rather than for export retail margins, which makes a near-term overseas launch less likely in any case.
Readers who want a Kagoshima shochu-distillery-turned-whisky bottle they can actually buy today have a better-established option in Kanosuke, which has an international distribution partner in Diageo and wider retail presence abroad; see our Kanosuke distillery guide for details. For the fuller regional picture, including Nagano’s equivalent story of a shochu-adjacent producer’s first single malt, read our coverage of Komoro distillery’s debut release and browse the full list of Japan’s whisky distilleries to track which of these new entrants eventually do export.
Source: PR TIMES (At Star Co., Ltd.) (Japanese)
Source: PR TIMES Story (Japanese)
Source: Gourmet Press (Japanese)
Primary source: At Star Co., Ltd. official site (Japanese) and, on the wider regional trend, jpwhisky.net on the Kagoshima Whisky Trail (Japanese).