News National Tax Agency competition: how to boost booze

thomas · 18 Aug 2022

No joke. The Japanese government has launched a nationwide competition for ideas on how to increase the consumption of alcoholic beverages:

日本産酒類の振興・発展を考えるビジネスコンテスト｜サケビバ

sakebiba.jp

サケビバ！, read Sake Viva!, is run by the National Tax Agency (NTA) and asks 20- to 39-year-olds to come up with proposals to help revitalise the popularity of alcoholic drinks, which have fallen out of favour because of lifestyle changes during the coronavirus pandemic and among young people.

The competition, which runs until 9 September, calls for "new products and designs" and ways to promote home drinking. Entrants are also encouraged to explore sales methods using the metaverse. The NTA said alcohol consumption in Japan had fallen from an average of 100 litres a person a year in 1995 to 75 litres in 2020. The decrease in alcohol sales has hit Japan's budget, which is already running a deficit of more than ¥48tn (£290bn) Taxes on alcohol accounted for 1.7% of Japan's tax revenue in 2020, down from 3% in 2011 and 5% in 1980. Total revenue from tax on alcohol in the 2020 financial year fell by more than ¥110bn to ¥1.1tn compared with the previous year, the NTA said earlier this month. It was the biggest fall in alcohol tax income in 31 years.

Japan tax office launches campaign to help encourage drinking

Contest asks young adults for ideas to revitalise popularity of alcoholic drinks after big fall in tax revenues

www.theguardian.com

Japan encourages its sober young people to drink more and boost economy

The Japanese government has launched a nationwide competition to revitalise the alcoholic beverages industry which has been shrinking due to demographic changes, lifestyle choices and the coronavirus pandemic.

news.sky.com

需要喚起へ若者のアイデアを　酒類消費減少で―国税庁：時事ドットコム

国税庁は、若者を対象に日本産酒類の需要喚起に向けた提案を募るコンテスト「サケビバ！」を開催する。新たなサービスや販売戦略について若者目線のアイデアを引き出し、人口減少などで縮小傾向にある国内市場の活性化につなげたい考えだ。

www.jiji.com

johnnyG · 18 Aug 2022

These days, my wife and I each have a can of beer a day. Tho sometimes that's a big one (500ml), or I sneak a second.

It seems that's still above average!

Lothor · 18 Aug 2022

I came on to the site to post the same story!
I think it's sad that a reduction in alcohol consumption, which on the whole is good for society, is being seen as a problem because it affects tax revenues.

Petaris · 18 Aug 2022

I agree with @Lothor, this seems like a good development. Maybe they could try reducing spending of tax money by, perhaps, not spending it on a nation wide campaign to be less healthy. Seems like that would be a win for everyone, well except the breweries of course.

thomas · 18 Aug 2022

I am waiting for the National Tax Agency to collaborate with Japan Tobacco on a pro-smoking campaign. More nicotine, more tax revenue, more concrete!

Grandpa Frank · 19 Aug 2022

I quit drinking in 1972 when I ended up as the Navy base chaplain's helper and never started again. When I started collecting guns and shooting in 1973, I figured guns and booze didn't go well together.

thomas · 20 Aug 2022

Interestingly, this story has not been picked up by the Japanese media. I have received many links to foreign media reports from friends and family overseas, most of them amused and bewildered.

Lothor · 20 Aug 2022

thomas said:
Interestingly, this story has not been picked up by the Japanese media. I have received many links to foreign media reports from friends and family overseas, most of them amused and bewildered.

I'm not surprised. It reflects very badly on the values of the people who run Japan and how they view the populace, and we can't have that, can we?

bentenmusume · 20 Aug 2022

I heartily disagree with the idea that drinking in and of itself is a bad thing. Yes, there are alcoholics and people who take it too far. There are also many people who in moderation enjoy the taste of alcohol and the liberation from reality that it offers, and there are many people (sake manufacturers/brewers, owners and employees of alcohol-serving establishments) whose livelihood depends on this and who have been severely impacted by COVID and the scapegoating of casual drinking/eating out.

The idea of "less people drinking" = unquestionably, objectively good, so let's do nothing and let the beverage industry die out is preposterous and insulting to a good portion of the population. I would applaud the Japanese government for this if they weren't the ones contributing in a huge part to this being a problem in the first place.

Lothor · 20 Aug 2022

bentenmusume said:
I heartily disagree with the idea that drinking in and of itself is a bad thing. Yes, there are alcoholics and people who take it too far. There are also many people who in moderation enjoy the taste of alcohol and the liberation from reality that it offers, and there are many people (sake manufacturers/brewers, owners and employees of alcohol-serving establishments) whose livelihood depends on this and who have been severely impacted by COVID and the scapegoating of casual drinking/eating out.

The idea of "less people drinking" = unquestionably, objectively good, so let's do nothing and let the beverage industry die out is preposterous and insulting to a good portion of the population. I would applaud the Japanese government for this if they weren't the ones contributing in a huge part to this being a problem in the first place.

I acknowledge all the positive things you've said about alcohol, and I like a beer and a visit to the bar too. I also sympathise with the rough deal that bar owners and workers got over the first two years of the pandemic (though reduced alcohol consumption in Japan is a long-term trend, making the pandemic irrelevant here).

However, alcohol does have a cost to society - the alcoholism that you mentioned, as well as increased health costs, accidents, and violence against people triggered by alcohol - and the cost is high enough for governments around the world to treat alcohol as a substance to be regulated and taxed to discourage excessive consumption. I'm not arguing that the cost associated with alcohol is higher than its benefit to society. However, the existence of this cost makes very morally dubious for a government to be promoting alcohol consumption for the sake of taxation revenue, particularly when there are many other sectors without such social drawbacks that could be promoted or social reforms that could be carried out to raise taxation revenue. Off the top of my head, how about reforming the tax laws that currently discourage spouses (often female graduates) from earning more than about 1.3 million yen a year?

If the beverage industry is under threat from dying out, and I don't believe that it is, it's the responsibility of the industry to draw up plans to save itself without the assistance of the government.

Petaris · 20 Aug 2022

bentenmusume said:
I heartily disagree with the idea that drinking in and of itself is a bad thing. Yes, there are alcoholics and people who take it too far. There are also many people who in moderation enjoy the taste of alcohol and the liberation from reality that it offers, and there are many people (sake manufacturers/brewers, owners and employees of alcohol-serving establishments) whose livelihood depends on this and who have been severely impacted by COVID and the scapegoating of casual drinking/eating out.

The idea of "less people drinking" = unquestionably, objectively good, so let's do nothing and let the beverage industry die out is preposterous and insulting to a good portion of the population. I would applaud the Japanese government for this if they weren't the ones contributing in a huge part to this being a problem in the first place.

The idea that the industry would just die out if they don't do anything is a bit unlikely. Has the tobacco industry died out even with national campaigns warning of the dangers to your health (in the US at least)? The answer is no, they most certainly have not. Once you are hooked it's very hard to stop, even if you know it's bad for you. I doubt the lockdowns have stopped any alcoholics from purchasing alcohol. In fact I bet it increased for that group as they were likely not at an office and thus would not be as easily noticed if they were drinking during the work day.

The impact would be to the casual drinkers or after work mandatory drinking get togethers. And honestly the casual stuff would come back strong if the goal of the campaign was just to ease people's minds about the state of the pandemic. It doesn't need to be targeted to alcohol, just to getting things "back to normal". I'm not qualified to give any advice as to whether or not that would be a good idea to do right now though.

thomas · 20 Aug 2022

As someone who loves his beer in the summer and who explores sake (moderately) on almost a daily basis, I agree that drinking alcohol is absolutely not bad. However, I believe it is unethical and irresponsible to entice the young to consume more alcohol. I wish the catering trade and the brewers a splendid recovery, but expanding the tax revenue by promoting alcohol consumption is wrong for the reasons @Lothor mentioned.

Lothor said:
If the beverage industry is under threat from dying out, and I don't believe that it is, it's the responsibility of the industry to draw up plans to save itself without the assistance of the government.

I wish that thought could be applied to other industries, too: agriculture, construction, etc.

Here's a piece from the NYT:

"I don't think it is a good thing to make people who don't drink, drink," said Mima Matsumaru, 25, who works in advertising. After using the pandemic as a chance to stop drinking, she said she didn't miss it very much anyway. None of the Japanese alcohol makers has signed on to the initiative. But bar owners praised it.

Drink Up, Japan Tells Young People. I’ll Pass, Many Reply. (Published 2022)

The country’s tax agency, hoping to reverse the alcohol industry’s pandemic doldrums, is holding a contest to encourage more drinking among the young.

www.nytimes.com

And still zilch on the Japanese TV news and the newspapers.

HanSolo · 20 Aug 2022

Saw this on LinkedIn, and it was met by some solid "yeah maybe you're just running out of young people?" comments.

Old parasitising the young. Can't tell if it's just selfishness or something more severe like narcissism.

thomas · 6 Sep 2022

If you run out of domestic guzzlers, go overseas. Suntory Inc. has been very successful with its lemon chūhai (チューハイ) in Australia and is now looking into expanding to the US and the UK.

The company tapped a localization team to adapt its Japanese best seller Strong Zero for the Australian market: The lemony tang was tweaked, and the alcohol was dialed down from a hefty 9 percent to a more drinkable 6 percent. It also branded the canned cocktail -196 Double Lemon in Australia, highlighting the extreme cold that Suntory claims it uses to extract flavors from fresh fruit. "It sold out almost immediately after launching," said Alana House, the editor of Sydney-based Drink Digest. The drink, price at about A$4.50 ($3.10) for an 11 oz can, had the advantage of being seen as a "cult" Japanese product, with a strong flavour profile and higher alcohol by volume (ABV) content, 6 percent versus 4.5 percent for a typical beer in the country, she added.

Suntory has its foot in the US market, having taken over Beam Inc. in 2014.

But logistics and taxes remain the bigger challenges. Suntory's historic strength is in spirits and U.S. distribution networks for spirits are narrower than those for beer and other malt-based drinks. Meanwhile, canned cocktails that use hard liquor like vodka or gin are taxed at about 45 cents a can, compared with about 8 cents for the seltzers that use malt liquor. Double Lemon, for example, uses shochu, a traditional Japanese liquor distilled usually from sweet potatoes. Also complicating the strategy, the canned cocktail market is highly fragmented and finely tailored to local tastes, with differences in alcohol bases, flavors, and drinking habits.

Suntory eyes U.S. canned cocktail push as young Japanese shun booze | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

Lothor · 6 Sep 2022

I'm not much of a chūhai drinker, associating them with the much scorned alcopops in the UK, but I've recently been drinking some of the alcohol-free lemon ones, and they're unexpectedly satisfying.

thomas · 6 Sep 2022

Ah, we should start a thread on Japanese soft drinks!

mdchachi · 6 Sep 2022

News National Tax Agency competition: how to boost booze

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