The sliding glass doors of the Fukagawa Distillery open onto a shoebox-size tasting room with immaculate white walls anchored by a curved white counter. Test tubes, beakers and bottles of Fukagawa Distillery's seasonal gins, each bearing a vividly colored label, line the shelves. Through a window behind the eight-seater bar, a gleaming copper-and-glass still takes pride of place in a room of steel tanks. The space feels both futuristic and nostalgic — part steampunk-spaceship, part alchemist’s laboratory.
Tucked in a residential corner of Koto Ward’s Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, a Tokyo neighborhood better known for art galleries and coffee shops than spirits, Fukagawa Distillery represents a creative, entrepreneurial spirit in Tokyo’s drink scene.
The distillery was established by glassmaker Kouki Sekiya and bartender Kouta Kobayashi in 2023.
Sekiya, the third-generation owner of Sekiya Rika, a scientific glassware company established in 1933, grew up surrounded by beakers, burners and borosilicate tubing. Concerned about the dwindling number of skilled glass artisans in Tokyo, he sought new ways to sustain the craft. In 2015, he opened Rikashitsu (“Science Lab” in Japanese), an experimental retail shop where he began producing compact, home-use distillation units. To his surprise, bartenders and spirit makers flocked to his workshops.
Kobayashi runs Bar Nico in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, which he opened in 2013 after returning from a sabbatical in Brighton, England. In 2016, he began specializing in gin and expanded his bar to include a gin shop and a restaurant serving curry with the spirit.
In 2018, Sekiya discovered craft gin at the annual Gin Festival Tokyo — an event that showcased more than 100 brands of gin — and was instantly hooked. Later, the momentum of the global gin boom sparked a larger idea. “We always made equipment for research,” he says, “but I started to wonder: What if we used glass to create something for people to enjoy, not just study?”
His vision took shape after meeting Kobayashi at an event intended to connect like-minded entrepreneurs in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa. With Sekiya developing the equipment and Kobayashi overseeing product and flavor development, the pair decided to try making hyper-local gin — starting with a custom still made of glass and copper that allows distillation to be viewed in real time. The signature model is based on a historical design once used in southwestern Japan’s Satsuma domain, reengineered with modern materials.
Sekiya brings an engineer’s precision to the project, while Kobayashi offers a bartender’s palate. Their collaboration centers on locality and seasonality. The distillery’s flagship gin, Fueki, features Aomori hiba (a kind of cypress) — a nod to the fragrant wood historically associated with bygone lumberyards in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa. Seasonal releases incorporate botanicals like strawberries and roses. Each batch is made by hand, yielding just 200 bottles at a time.
Although local bars are key channels, the team is pushing to position gin as a mealtime tipple. That approach is reflected in a food and drink pairing event held in June, a collaboration with Tokyo’s Sushi M that showcased how botanicals can harmonize with Japanese cuisine.
Known for his counterintuitive pairings, Sushi M's owner-sommelier Yoshinobu Kimura created cocktails using Fukagawa's gins as the base, blending them with sake and other spirits, as well as homemade syrups and infusions. The signature Fueki, mixed with gooseberry juice and Awaibuki sparkling sake, accompanied an amuse-bouche of seared horse mackerel, eggplant and caviar sandwiched between crisp monaka rice wafers.
Some cocktails tread into strange territory, such as a charcoal-grilled mudskipper fish steeped in a blend of the distillery's seasonal magnolia leaf gin and Flor de Cana rum. The blackened fish lent a subtle smokiness and earthy undertone to the concoction, which complemented the umami richness in two kinds of raw tuna.
Gin also found its way into the dishes themselves: A drop of lemon-scented gin provided the finishing touch to a puree of rice with clam broth, topped with clams, vegetables and clam-stock foam — a contemporary riff on the local specialty, Fukagawa-meshi (clam soup poured over cooked rice). A subtle cocktail of oolong tea, elderflower liqueur and the distillery's osmanthus gin complemented the creation.
The distillery hopes to collaborate with more restaurants while maintaining its hyper-local focus. For now, Sekiya and Kobayashi are only selling their gin at their distillery and restaurants and bars in the neighborhood, viewing their spirit not just as a product but as a draw that brings visitors to explore the area’s unique character.
Kobayashi says, "We want neighborhood folks to think of it as their local drink."
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