Turn wine into gold. This is the miracle that Japan hopes for. The Japanese government has launched a major advertising campaign to encourage alcohol consumption among young people, which has been declining for several years, reports the British newspaper The Guardian. But more than the pleasure of sharing a good beer with friends, the government especially hopes to relaunch the taxes on the drink.
Called Saké Viva!, this campaign organized by the national tax agency will take the form of a competition reserved for 20-39 year olds, who will have until September 9 to present their ideas to change the way the Japanese look at drinking.
Because the annual consumption of sake, beer and other spirits has been falling for years in the land of the Rising Sun, dropping from 100 liters per person in 1995 to 75 liters in 2020. And since the confinements, the Japanese would no longer see the interest in drinking with co-workers to sympathize and deepen their relationships, according to the Japan Times, citing a campaign official.
As a result, taxes on alcohol, which represented 5% of tax revenue in the 1980s, had fallen to 3% in 2011 and represented only 1.7% in 2020. That year, the total revenue of This tax fell from more than 110 billion yen to 1.1 billion yen, compared to last year, says the national tax agency.
Beer is no longer popular
According to the Guardian, beer consumption has fallen the most. Brewery Kirin estimated that per capita beer consumption in Japan was around 55 bottles in 2020, down 9.1% from the previous year. A disaster for a country hit by the Covid-19, whose debt exceeds 7300 billion euros, more than three times the amount of the debt of the French State, according to Les Échos.
Sake Viva! therefore hopes that young people will share their ideas for “new products and designs” as well as ways to promote home consumption. Participants are also strongly encouraged to think about new business methods, relying on the metaverse in particular, according to the British daily, citing the Japanese media Jiji.com.
The competition finalists will be invited to an awards ceremony in Tokyo on Nov. 10, and Japan’s tax agency will fund the commercialization of their ideas. The least enthusiastic in this story is perhaps the Japanese Minister of Health, who made a point of recalling that this campaign would be an opportunity to remind the Japanese of the need to consume only “the appropriate amount of alcohol”.