Japanese alcohol terminology
 

I have a question on Japanese alcohol terminology.

In South Korea, people called sake as jeongjong (正宗; masamune in Japanese) like an average noun.

For some reason I find this interesting. Is there a Japanese alcohol company called Masamune? For some reason this sounds like an example of genericized trademark.

This is an interesting question.

There is a well-known sake maker named 菊正宗（きくまさむね） but I've been unable to find a company named 正宗. Yet I've found that there was a sake brand (not sure it was the company's name as well) by the name of 正宗, which was created in the 1830's. Depending on when sake was introduced to Korea, this brand may have had something to do with it.

Sake was introduced during 1910, AKA the annexation year.

This is likely the etymology of this word, in on-yomi (seishou) of course.

I don't know very much about the alcohol production during the Japanese colonialism. But it's strange to see two kinds of beverages during that time that are/were very much same but policy-wise they were too different to each other during the colonial era:

1. jeongjong (正宗 in Sino-Korean; Japanese equivalent of nihonshu; sake in the West)
2. cheongju (清酒 in Sino-Korean; almost exactly like nihonshu/sake with subtle differences)

:smokingbear:

The KIKU-MASAMUNE SAKE BREWING CO., LTD.

FYI, I finally found some info.