Satsuma Kiriko and Japanese Whisky: Where Glass Meets Amber

In the mid-19th century, the furnaces of Kagoshima glowed day and night.
Artisans of the Satsuma domain stood before the flames, melting sand and ash to give shape to light. Japan was still half-closed to the world, yet Satsuma had already begun to embrace Western science and craft.

In 1855, the domain established a glassworks at Iso — today’s Shuseikan area — where over a hundred craftsmen worked at its height. Within the refinery of Kagoshima Castle, they succeeded in producing colored glass in red, blue, violet, and green, with the vivid scarlet, known as “Satsuma Red,” celebrated nationwide as Japan’s first successful red glass.

————The modern Shuseikan Industrial Complex in Kagoshima City （once the heart of the Satsuma domain’s shipbuilding and glassmaking innovation.）

By 1865, the Shuseikan Machinery Factory was built — the oldest surviving Western-style factory in Japan.
It forged ships and metal, but it also became the cradle of light.
Here, Satsuma Kiriko was born: thick glass layered with color, deeply cut by hand, each facet a quiet echo of fire and breath.

Half a century later, with the Meiji Restoration came another flame — the flame of whisky distillation.
Scottish copper stills and malt-making found their way to Japan,
and in places like Yoichi and Yamazaki, vapors of the first Japanese whiskies began to rise.

From Satsuma Kiriko to Japanese whisky, the dialogue was natural.
One gave light a vessel, the other gave light a flavor.
When amber whisky meets the facets of Kiriko glass,
two fires — one of glass, one of spirit — converge and glow in quiet harmony.

————RIN ESSENCE’s Satsuma Kiriko recreates the deep radiance of “Satsuma no Beni” (薩摩の紅) — the legendary crimson glass first perfected in nineteenth-century Kagoshima.

In modern Japan, the glow of Satsuma Kiriko still graces whisky bars and homes.
No longer a symbol of luxury alone, it embodies continuity —
a bridge between fire, craft, and human warmth.
When amber fills a Kiriko tumbler, one lifts not just a drink but a century of devotion —
the persistence of artisans who once believed that even glass could remember the breath of fire.