‘We cherish everything': How the Japanese make perfect drinks

The Age

24-05-2025

'The young generation here start drinking creative cocktails,' Ohtake says, 'but then they graduate from that into more simple, classic cocktails. The reason for that is Japanese people like really simple things, like sushi, tempura, where the procedure is so important.'
Think of sushi: just a few ingredients, rice, vinegar, fish, but treated with such skill and dedication that a thing of alchemical beauty emerges. And now consider, say, a negroni, which is just gin, vermouth and Campari, but here at Royal Bar and indeed at many high-end cocktail bars across Tokyo and the rest of Japan, these simple ingredients are used to create something amazing.
Cocktail culture is huge in Japan. Though, you will rarely find a packed nightclub full of partygoers standing shoulder-to-shoulder at a bar, yelling orders for espresso martinis. Instead what you will discover is intimate spaces like Royal Bar, where jazz tinkles over hidden speakers, drinkers perch on leather-bound stools, and suited bartenders take their time mixing perfect drinks.
'Cocktail culture in Japan started in Yokohama because they have the harbour, the port,' Ohtake explains. 'And specifically, the culture of Japanese cocktails began [in the late 19th century] at the Yokohama Grand Hotel, where they have a signature cocktail called the Bamboo, a very Japanese cocktail. After World War II, this culture became very popular.'
Royal Bar has played its own vital part in Tokyo's cocktail scene. Back in the 1960s, the original iteration of this bar, at the original Palace Hotel site, was run by Kiyoshi Imai, a legendary bartender who was known as Mr Martini, such was his dedication to one of the world's greatest cocktails.
Imai's legacy spread throughout Tokyo, where areas such as Ginzo, Omotesando, Ebisu and Shinjuku are strewn with tiny bars turning out expertly created, classic cocktails in refined surrounds. His legacy has even more directly been passed to Ohtake, himself an award-winning bartender intent on perfection.
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And so I try Ohtake's whisky sour, where every ingredient is in harmony, presented in a short glass with a large and perfectly clear ice cube. Ohtake also recommends his take on the negroni, where he replaces the gin with shochu, a Japanese spirit that the bartender says is drastically underrated on the world scene.
I also sample his version of the Penicillin, another classic cocktail, this time with apple juice added to acknowledge the autumn season. It's perfection, of course, draped with a thin slice of apple that Ohtake has patiently, slowly been dehydrating for the past few days.