FUKUOKA -- Kyushu folk are feeling quite tickled about something at the moment: a shochu boom in bars around Japan. The surging popularity of this once-lowbrow spirit, which originated in Kyushu, suggests that its old-fogy image may be disappearing for good and that lucrative times lie ahead for the shochu market.
A clear liquor distilled mostly from sweet potatoes, wheat, rice or barley, shochu has an alcohol concentration between 20 and 25 percent and a crisp dry taste comparable to vodka, arrack or awamori. This is no coincidence.
Shochu is the easternmost result of a long history of distilled spirits that originated in Persia, spreading west to Europe and east to India, Thailand and Okinawa (the home of awamori). Around the mid-16th century, the technique arrived in Kagoshima, where shochu was born.