Michisakari's Sake Lees Become Skincare: "HADAYOI" Joins Japan's Growing Sake-Beauty Market

A new skincare brand called "HADAYOI" has launched, using sake lees and rice bran from Michisakari, a sake brewery in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture. The brand is a joint project between cosmetics maker DMA (Nagoya), Michisakari, and Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank, upcycling sake production byproducts into cosmetic ingredients.

The lineup includes a lotion (150mL, ¥2,980) and a rich cream (30g, ¥3,980), combining Michisakari's sake lees with Hokkaido-sourced placenta extract and hot spring water. Both are alcohol-free.

Sake Breweries and Skincare: A Longer History Than You'd Think

Sake breweries moving into skincare is far from new in Japan.

Kikumasamune (Kobe) makes the best-known entry point: its "Nihonshu no Keshosui" (Sake Lotion) uses rice fermentation liquid derived from junmai ginjo sake as a moisturizing ingredient. At ¥990 for 500mL, it has shipped over 5 million bottles and earned a "Hall of Fame" spot in a leading Japanese cosmetics review magazine.

SHIRO's "Sakekasu Keshosui" is made by dissolving pure rice sake lees from Kobayashi Shuzo — a 140-year-old brewery in Kuriyama, Hokkaido — in water. The formula has just eight ingredients. It's been a bestseller for over a decade. 120mL, ¥4,054.

Fukumitsuya, a brewery in Kanazawa with roughly 400 years of history, noticed that toji (master brewers) kept remarkably smooth hands despite working through harsh winters. They turned their rice fermentation technology into a full cosmetics line — "Amino Rice," "Suppin Ism" — made entirely from ingredients safe enough to eat.

Hakutsuru (Kobe) also runs a sake skincare series.

Where HADAYOI Fits In

Compared to these established players, HADAYOI's angle is upcycling. As Japanese eating habits shift away from traditional foods like tsukemono (pickles), demand for sake lees has dropped, leaving breweries with surplus byproduct. Turning that into cosmetic ingredients reduces waste for breweries and creates a new point of contact between consumers and sake culture.

Unlike breweries that developed their own cosmetics in-house (Kikumasamune, Fukumitsuya, Hakutsuru), HADAYOI is an outside cosmetics company sourcing byproducts from a brewery. For smaller breweries like Michisakari, this model has a much lower barrier than building a cosmetics business from scratch.