New Japanese Whisky Distillery Map shows 168 distilleries across Japan

By now, you probably know that tons of new whisky distilleries have popped up in Japan within the past decade.

But where? When did they come online?

The answer to the first question is “across the entire country,” all the way from semi-tropical Okinawa in the south up to a remote island off the coast of Hokkaido, a mere stone’s throw away from Siberia.

Feature 1: The map is animated and fully interactive

For this map, I felt it important to convey the pace at which these new whisky distilleries have come online. The distillery license tracker sort of went in that direction, but this map presents each distillery as an individual point, so you can see just how rapidly the map gets populated. I will keep the map updated going forward, so you’ll always have the latest information.

Feature 2: It’s also a relief map

If you zoom in past a certain point, you’ll see that the map converts to a relief map. That’s because when we talk about whisky distilleries, we often talk about what kind of environment it’s in. Is it next to the ocean? Does it sit on a mountain? Or deep in a forest? In a river delta? The relief map will show you these details.

Feature 3: It tells you if a distillery is a JSLMA member or not

Given the recent musings we’ve heard coming out of the JSLMA about adding logos to bottles and getting GI for Japanese whisky, I wanted to highlight the distilleries where the companies operating them are members of the JSLMA, and those that are not. JSLMA members have to conform to that organization’s standards to call a bottle “Japanese whisky,” while non-members do not.

To be crystal clear here: this is not to say that non-member distilleries are making fake Japanese whisky, or making bad whisky. It’s just that up until now the JSLMA member list has been only available in Japanese… and I don’t think anyone has ever attempted to reconcile that list with a full list of distilleries (as licensed by the National Tax Agency). So I did it myself.

The obvious question: are all these distilleries really making Japanese whisky?

There are 168 points on the map as I write this in May 2026. So… are there 168 Japanese whisky distilleries in Japan? That might seem like a question with an easy answer, but it’s not. The data that drives that map–including the address/geocoding data–is sourced directly from Japan’s National Tax Agency. This means that for a point on the map, someone simply acquired a license to produce whisky. Do they actually distill Japanese whisky? For JSLMA members, I think it’s safe to say yes. For non-member distilleries, the answer might(!) be no. Even if you’re just importing Scotch or Bourbon then bottling it in Japan, you still need to be a licensed distillery.