Chu-Hi

Japan's ubiquitous convenience store cocktail, a refreshing shochu and soda highball available in dozens of fruit flavors from every konbini.

Chu-hi — a contraction of shōchū hai, meaning shōchū highball — emerged in post-war Tokyo's working-class bar culture in the years following Japan's defeat in 1945. Shōchū is Japan's most widely produced distilled spirit, made from base ingredients including barley (mugi), rice (kome), sweet potato (imo), or buckwheat (soba), and typically bottled at between 25% and 35% ABV. It differs from sake, which is fermented but not distilled, and from whisky, which must be grain-based and aged in barrel. In the austerity of the early Occupation years, shōchū was cheaper and more accessible than imported spirits, and Tokyo's neighborhood bars — izakaya and standing bars — began serving it with soda water, the basic dilution making the spirit easier to drink over the course of a long evening. Fruit flavored versions developed as the economic recovery accelerated through the 1950s and 1960s, with lemon becoming the canonical flavor — the acidity complementing shōchū's grain-forward character in a way that mirrors gin and tonic or vodka soda in Western contexts. The canned chu-hi industry, launched in the 1980s and dominated by Suntory's Strong Zero brand, transformed the drink into one of Japan's most consumed daily alcoholic beverages. Convenience store and vending machine canned chu-hi now come in dozens of flavors — grapefruit, grape, yuzu, peach, plum, and seasonal varieties — and the format's low price and approachable ABV have made it a staple of casual Japanese social drinking.