Comparative Analysis of Japanese Rice Wine Export Trends: Large Firms in the Nada Region vs. SMEs in Other Regions

In recent decades, Japanese rice wine, sake , exports to international countries have developed tremendously. Recently, in particular, sake exports are increasing in both volume and unit value due to factors such as the registration of Japanese cuisine as an intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO in 2013 and the economic situations including the rapid depreciation of Japanese yen. However, there are no studies which investigated sake exports via empirical methods as far as we know. In this study, we constructed hierarchical Bayesian models and analyzed unbalanced panel datasets on the export of Japanese sake to China, Hong Kong SAR China, Singapore, Taiwan and the US by using a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and an ancillary-sufficiency interweaving strategy (ASIS) as the first empirical study of Japanese sake export. As a result, it was found that the trends in export volume and unit value to China, Hong Kong SAR China, Singapore and the US were significantly positive. In addition, although Taiwan had a negative trend before UNESCO registration, the trend became positive after its registration. Based on these results, it can be concluded that Japanese sake has been booming worldwide, though the degree may vary from country to country. Especially, we found that the UNESCO registration of Japanese food, Washoku , has significant effects on booming sake exports both in terms of volume and unit value. Finally, we divided the sake export data by regional customs offices in charge and conducted a detailed analysis on regional heterogeneity in sake exports. From the results, we found there were some different trends among regions.