Seibei Nakagawa Brings German Lager Training to the Kaitakushi Brewery

In September 1876, the government-run Kaitakushi Beer Brewery opened in Sapporo with Seibei Nakagawa as its technical brewer. Nakagawa had completed 26 months of brewing and malting training at the Berliner Brauerei-Gesellschaft’s Fürstenwalde works before returning to Japan in 1875. Nakagawa applied that training to brewery planning, equipment and raw-material decisions, and cold fermentation. His explanation that lager brewing required abundant ice and a cool climate helped support the decision to build in Hokkaido rather than Tokyo. The episode is a well-documented transfer of German brewing knowledge into Japan’s emerging industrial beer sector, without depending on a disputed “first Japanese brewer” label.