Hombo Shuzo (本坊酒造) is the Kagoshima drinks company that makes Mars whisky. It was founded in 1872, it still earns most of its money from shochu, and it runs two malt distilleries, Mars Komagatake in Nagano and Mars Tsunuki in Kagoshima, plus a maturation warehouse on the island of Yakushima (屋久島). By the company president’s own estimate, whisky now accounts for roughly 30% of sales.
This piece is about the company rather than any one distillery: why a shochu family took out a whisky license in 1949, why it nearly gave that license away in the 1990s, and what it is building now. It draws on Hombo Shuzo’s Japanese-language history and a 2025 interview with president Kazuhito Hombo (本坊和人).
From cotton to shochu to a whisky license, 1872 to 1949
The company did not start as a drinks maker. According to its official history, Goemon Hombo and his son Matsuzaemon set up a cotton-processing business in Tsunuki (津貫), in what is now Minamisatsuma, in 1872. The founding motto was “social service through the promotion of industry,” a very Meiji-era idea. The family moved into rapeseed oil in 1885 and general trading in 1902.
Shochu came in 1909, when the trading business was incorporated and began making what was then called old-style shochu, today’s honkaku shochu. In 1918 it added new-style (column-distilled) shochu using a German-patented continuous still. The Hombos ran industrial stills decades before they touched whisky.
The war nearly wiped that out. Air raids in 1945 burned both the Kagoshima branch and the Tsunuki plant to the ground, and the Tsunuki works was only rebuilt in 1947. Two years later, in 1949, the company obtained a whisky production license. Kazuhito Hombo told ORIX’s business magazine MOVE ON that the decision was made in anticipation that “the era of Western spirits is coming.”
The family link to Kiichiro Iwai
The reason a shochu house could make whisky at all was a family connection. The company says the business was built by seven brothers. The youngest, Kurakichi Hombo (本坊蔵吉), studied engineering at Osaka Imperial University under Kiichiro Iwai (岩井喜一郎), then one of Japan’s leading authorities on alcohol distillation. Kurakichi researched still design, and in time he married Iwai’s daughter.
Iwai became an adviser to Hombo Shuzo in 1945. In 1949 Kurakichi took charge of whisky production under his teacher and father-in-law. English accounts usually credit Iwai alone. Hombo’s own history also credits the son-in-law who ran the plant.
A name chosen by the public
The Mars name arrived in 1960. The company says “Mars” (マルス, the planet) was picked from entries submitted in an open public contest for its new Western-spirits brand. The company gives no further explanation, and we have not found one.
Yamanashi, the Taketsuru notes and a first pause
In 1960 Hombo opened a plant in Isawa, Yamanashi, as its base for Western drinks. It made both wine and whisky there, and the site survives today as the Mars Yamanashi Winery. The pot stills installed that year were designed by Iwai. The company says he is understood to have drawn on the training report Masataka Taketsuru wrote in Scotland, the document now known as the Taketsuru Note. Our Mars Shinshu distillery guide explains how Iwai came to hold that report, and our Yoichi guide covers what Taketsuru built with it.
Malt distillation at Yamanashi stopped in 1972. Kazuhito Hombo joined the company in 1980 and was posted to Yamanashi in 1982. He recalls finding the pot still “left covered in dust.” Wine was the plant’s real business. The only whisky being made was coming slowly out of a small pot still in Kagoshima.
The early-1980s boom in “ji-whisky” (local whisky) changed that. The president of the day gave the order, in Kazuhito’s words, “We are going to make whisky again.” In 1985 the company moved the whole Yamanashi distilling setup to a new plant in Miyada, Nagano, at 798 meters. That plant was called Mars Shinshu and was renamed Mars Komagatake in 2024. Distilling in Kagoshima had stopped the year before so production could be concentrated in the mountains.
The tax change that nearly ended Mars
English accounts usually say only that “demand fell.” Hombo’s president is more specific. Japan used to tax whisky by grade (special, first and second class) according to alcohol strength. After pressure from Britain to lower the tax on imported whisky, the 1989 liquor tax reform scrapped the grade system and put whisky on a single rate.
For Hombo that was a direct hit. Its best seller was a second-grade blend, Mars Whisky Extra, sold in the 1.8-liter isshobin bottle. After the reform its shop price rose from 1,630 yen to 3,200 yen. Sales dropped sharply, and the company could not ship what it made. Distillation at the Nagano plant stopped in 1992. Kazuhito says industry shipments later fell to as little as one forty-fifth of the peak. Inside the company, some argued that Hombo should leave whisky altogether and “hand the production license over to another company.”
It did neither. The official timeline says Hombo spent the 1990s selling its maturing stock. In 1995 it released Maltage Komagatake 10 Years Old, a single malt named for the Central Alps peak above the distillery. For the wider industry picture, see the Japanese whisky shortage, explained.
One hundred million yen and an argument about inheritance
The turn came around 2008, with the highball boom and the arrival of new craft producers such as Chichibu. Kazuhito asked the then-president, Osamu Hombo, to invest in the distillery again. Repairing the aging equipment would cost 100 million yen, and the idea was debated inside the company. His argument was about duty rather than market forecasts: “We cannot let a business that our predecessors carried on with such effort and pride be destroyed in our generation.”
The company agreed in 2009, and distilling restarted in February 2011, 19 years after it stopped. The stock kept through the lean years paid off almost at once. In 2011 Hombo released Maltage 3+25, a 28-year-old made from spirit distilled in Kagoshima and Yamanashi, aged about three years there and then about 25 more in Nagano. In 2013 it won the top blended malt award at the World Whiskies Awards.
“Local has global value”: two distilleries, three cellars
Kazuhito Hombo’s written message as president is built around one phrase: “ローカルはグローバルに価値を持つ,” which translates as “the local has global value.” His argument: drinks come from a place’s climate and culture, and a regional producer earns respect abroad by turning what is specific to its region into value. One question he sets the company is what Shinshu, Minamisatsuma and Yakushima each add to maturation.
The 2016 expansion put that idea into practice. Hombo built Mars Tsunuki on the company’s founding ground, bringing malt distillation back to Kagoshima after 32 years. The same year it opened the Mars Yakushima Aging Cellar at its existing Yakushima site. The company had been maturing shochu in jars inside a tunnel at the foot of Mount Tachudake on the island since 2001. The whisky warehouse extended a habit the shochu side already had.
| Site | Location | Role for whisky | Whisky years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tsunuki plant | Minamisatsuma, Kagoshima | Original 1949 whisky production | 1949 to 1957 |
| Kagoshima plant | Kagoshima city | Held the license, later small-scale malt distilling | 1957 to 1960, 1969 to 1984 |
| Yamanashi plant | Isawa, Yamanashi | Iwai-designed pot still, now a winery | 1960 to 1972 |
| Mars Komagatake | Miyada, Nagano, 798 m | Main malt distillery | 1985 to 1992, 2011 to now |
| Mars Tsunuki | Minamisatsuma, Kagoshima | Second malt distillery | 2016 to now |
| Yakushima Aging Cellar | Yakushima island | Maturation only, no stills | 2016 to now |
Kazuhito admits the southern sites break a rule. Warm climates have long been considered bad for whisky, he says, because maturation wants a cool warehouse all year. His answer is to make up for the climate through raw materials, production methods and cask selection, rather than pretend the heat is not there. Yakushima is warm as well, with lowland temperatures averaging about 20°C, plus sea air from a coast of raised coral reef. “Usually the distillery and the warehouse are in the same place,” he says. “We deliberately put the warehouse somewhere else” to create a distinct character. MARS The Y.A., released in 2022, is the result: spirit from both distilleries, matured on the island. Hombo is also part of the Kagoshima whisky trail.
What a shochu house brings to whisky
Hombo is not the only shochu maker in malt; Kanosuke, also in Kagoshima, is the best-known newcomer. The difference is that Hombo has already lived through a full collapse and recovery of the Japanese market.
The president’s comments on the shochu business explain how the company now approaches whisky. Honkaku shochu shipments are falling, he says, and price competition has turned much of the category into a commodity. Working in France taught him that family wineries far smaller than Hombo could post very strong results, because European producers are much better at “selling value.” He says the company is only now building that kind of higher-margin business, and whisky is where it is happening. He applies the same thinking to shochu. Hombo’s Akanekaze 43, made with a patented method that ferments raw sweet potato grated with the yeast starter, sells for 5,940 yen per 700ml, three to four times the price of an ordinary shochu.
The blender’s view
At Tsunuki, chief distilling manager and blender Tatsuro Kusano (草野辰朗) described the day-to-day work to the same magazine. The site held about 4,000 casks at the time of the interview, the oldest filled in 2016. Once a year he checks every one of them. He sorts them into single-cask candidates, blend anchors and casks that need more time, trusting his own judgment.
He is also working with locally grown malting barley and with low-yield ancient barley varieties. On local barley he is candid: “There is romance in it.” He calls whisky “a drink for enjoying diversity.” His goal is a bottle he can recommend abroad with the confidence to say, “How about that? Japanese whisky is impressive.”
Reading the Mars range, and where to buy it
Hombo’s own brand page lists nine whisky lines. The names are easier to follow once you know the history above.
- Komagatake and Tsunuki: single malts named after each distillery. Kazuhito said in 2025 that both would move from dated limited editions to non-age-statement releases available all year. Komagatake did so in September 2025, as we reported when a 200ml bottle was added. He also expects the older dated editions to rise in value.
- MARS The Y.A.: the Yakushima-matured blend of both distilleries’ spirit.
- Iwai: named for Kiichiro Iwai. The company launched Iwai Tradition in 2010 as an expression of gratitude to him.
- Maltage: the older blended malt line, which includes the 1995 Komagatake 10 and the 3+25.
- Le Papillon, Lucky Cat, Hoken and Mars Whisky: smaller or domestic-focused lines.
For US readers, the Iwai family is the most visible part of the range. Hombo’s US importer, High Road Spirits, carries Iwai (40% ABV), Iwai 45, Iwai Tradition and Iwai Rye Style. The importer says Iwai Rye Style (50%) marries the Iwai blend with straight rye whiskey from Kentucky. Because it contains American whiskey, it falls outside what Japan’s 2021 industry standard allows to be called Japanese whisky. Our guide to the Japanese whisky definition explains the rule. The importer states the rye component openly. It is simply worth knowing before you buy.
In the US, look for Mars at specialist spirits retailers that stock the High Road range. Where to buy Japanese whisky in the US covers the retailers. In the UK and Europe, Mars single malts appear regularly at specialist online shops, including Master of Malt, which keeps a dedicated Mars distillery page. Our UK buying guide lists the others.
For the drinker, the point is simple. Mars is not a new craft project with a borrowed story. It is a 150-year-old regional company that kept its whisky stock through two lean decades. That stock, and the deliberate spread of climates across Nagano, Kagoshima and Yakushima, is what you are paying for.
FAQ
Q: Is Mars whisky made by Hombo Shuzo?
A: Yes. Mars is the whisky brand of Hombo Shuzo, a Kagoshima company founded in 1872 that also makes shochu, wine and liqueurs. The brand name dates from 1960, when the company chose “Mars” from entries in a public contest. Its whisky comes from the Mars Komagatake and Mars Tsunuki distilleries.
Q: Why did Mars stop distilling from 1992 to 2011?
A: The 1989 liquor tax reform abolished Japan’s grade-based whisky tax. Hombo’s best-selling second-grade blend nearly doubled in price, from 1,630 to 3,200 yen, and sales collapsed. Distilling in Nagano stopped in 1992. The company sold maturing stock instead and restarted distillation in February 2011 after a 100 million yen repair.
Q: Who was Kiichiro Iwai, and why is a whisky named after him?
A: Iwai was a leading Japanese distillation engineer who advised Hombo Shuzo from 1945. He designed the company’s first malt pot still in 1960, reportedly drawing on Masataka Taketsuru’s Scottish training notes. His son-in-law, Kurakichi Hombo, ran whisky production. Hombo launched Iwai Tradition in 2010 in gratitude to him.
Q: What is the difference between Mars Shinshu and Mars Komagatake?
A: They are the same distillery. Hombo Shuzo opened it in Miyada, Nagano, in 1985 as Mars Shinshu and renamed it Mars Komagatake in 2024 to match its Komagatake single malt brand. Older bottles and secondary-market listings still use the Shinshu name, so you will see both in shops.
Sources
- Hombo Shuzo, “沿革 (Company history)” (Japanese) — https://hombo.co.jp/company/history.html
- Hombo Shuzo, “ウイスキー | 本坊クオリティー (Mars whisky history)” (Japanese) — https://www.hombo.co.jp/quality/whisky/
- Hombo Shuzo, “トップメッセージ (President’s message)” (Japanese) — https://www.hombo.co.jp/company/message/
- ORIX MOVE ON, “世界で評価される国産ウイスキーを。鹿児島の老舗蔵元が挑むマーケットのゲームチェンジ” (Japanese), interview with Kazuhito Hombo and Tatsuro Kusano, February 7, 2025 — https://www.orix.co.jp/grp/move_on/entry/2025/02/07/100000
- High Road Spirits, “Mars Whisky” (US importer brand page) — https://www.highroadspirits.com/mars