Cider will once again take centre stage in Japan this August with the celebration of the Nippon Cider Matsuri, SISGA Japan, the Japanese version of the International Hall of Gala Ciders (SISGA), held every year in Asturias during the last weekend of September. Born from the Asturian experience, the project is now reaching its second edition after the exceptional reception it received in Japan.
Cider will once again take centre stage in Japan this August with the celebration of the Nippon Cider Matsuri, SISGA Japan, the Japanese version of the International Hall of Gala Ciders (SISGA), held every year in Asturias during the last weekend of September. Born from the Asturian experience, the project is now reaching its second edition after the exceptional reception it received in Japan.The event is much more than simply reproducing SISGA thousands of kilometres away. It is an adaptation to the Japanese market of an initiative whose aim is to promote international cider culture, bring producers and consumers closer together, and showcase the extraordinary diversity that currently exists around apples and their derivatives.
The Asturies XXI Foundation is also behind this initiative. The Asturian organisation has been involved for years in the international promotion of cider culture and in the organisation of SISGA. Its participation in the Nippon Cider Matsuri helps maintain a direct link between the event held in Japan and the original Asturian event.
This September, SISGA will reach its 16th edition, following a trajectory in which both the number of countries represented and the quality of the awards have steadily increased.
The move to Japan was a natural consequence of this international vocation. The interest shown in the Asian country in cider and in products closely linked to specific territories opened up the possibility of bringing the SISGA philosophy to the Japanese public, thanks to our ambassadors there. The success of the experience made it possible to continue the project and reach a second edition of SISGA Japan this August, progressively consolidating a sister event to the one held in Asturias.
One of the most striking aspects of this new edition is the intensive advertising campaign being carried out throughout the summer in Japan, and particularly in Tokyo. Promotion of the Nippon Cider Matsuri is not limited to traditional posters, social media or other usual forms of publicity.
The event’s image is also reaching some of the country’s busiest transport networks. Throughout the summer, promotional videos are being shown on Japanese bullet train lines, while the event also has an audiovisual presence on the JR network in Tokyo, one of the transport systems used every day by millions of people across the Japanese capital’s metropolitan area.
The campaign provides a particularly significant promotional dimension for an event devoted to cider. The aim is to take the drink beyond exclusively professional or specialist circles and introduce it to a much broader public. Commuters, workers, tourists and regular public transport users may come across the Nippon Cider Matsuri during their journeys and discover a whole cider world that may previously have been unfamiliar to them.
This bold commitment to outreach fits perfectly with the philosophy of SISGAJapan. At the Tokyo event, each participating country will contribute different cider varieties, techniques, styles, gastronomy and social traditions surrounding the same product.
Japan strengthens this large-scale setting for international exchange. The Nippon Cider Matsuri brings Japanese cider culture into contact with other cider traditions while at the same time introducing the Japanese public to a sector that is currently experiencing major growth and transformation.
The project also enjoys the collaboration of CIDERCITIES, an international cider association, as well as the European Network of Cider Cities, a cooperation structure that develops initiatives and projects related to apple and cider production.
The work of this network is based on a fundamental idea: behind cider there is far more than just a drink. There are orchards, traditional apple varieties, producers, research, heritage, landscape, gastronomy, tradition, tourism and an entire culture built up over generations around a product that, in Asturias, is part of our identity. The involvement of these organisations therefore broadens the scope of SISGA Japan and connects the event with international projects working on the future of cider-producing territories.
For Asturias, the Japanese event also represents an important opportunity for international projection. Cider is one of the country’s most recognisable cultural elements, but events such as SISGAJapan make it possible to present it from a contemporary perspective: as tradition, but also as a growing economic activity, innovation, agriculture, heritage, gastronomy and a meeting point between cultures.
The existence of two major events linked to one another, one in Japan in August and the other in Asturias at the end of September, reflects the international evolution achieved by the project. The second edition of the Nippon Cider Matsuri follows the positive response to the first, while the Asturian SISGA is already preparing for its 16th edition.
