Photo/Illutration Suzumo Sakurai, left, at his bar in Tokyo's Meguro Ward in January 2022 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

I usually feel uncomfortable with foreign loanwords transliterated into “katakana.” They often make me feel like I’ve been deceived.

But one such word, “soba kyuriasu” (sober curious), recently jolted me. It apparently means the awareness of things you gain by choosing not to drink.

Writer Suzumo Sakurai, 54, began to avoid alcohol for the sober curious lifestyle three years ago. The trigger for the shift was a terrible hangover.

As he started a life without alcohol, Sakurai immediately noticed that the days felt longer. “My mind is clear, and I can read books at night.”

He used to drink almost every night and would wake up in the morning feeling listless and tired. He hated how he aggressively started arguments when he was drunk.

“I made many mistakes due to alcohol,” he says. “I wish I had stopped drinking 10 years earlier.”

Sakurai, however, has been annoyed by the lack of options for sober curious people who join drinking sessions. He says he has felt this society is “designed to suit the people who drink.”

He has opened a bar offering non-alcohol beer from countries around the world in Tokyo’s Meguro district. “This is my resistance to the drinking culture.”

Human history has been intertwined with the history of liquor. Tao Yuanming (365-427), a Chinese poet and politician in the Jin Dynasty, wrote in one poem, “Throughout my life I did not stop drinking.”

Li Bai (701-762), a Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty, composed a poem with a line saying, “One cup, one more, and yet another.” He boasted about drinking “300 cups” of liquor.

I wonder whether these great poets would have produced more great poems if they had stopped drinking in their later years.

Jan. 8 was the last day for New Year events and decorations. Many people must have drunk too much during the year-end and New-Year holidays, while others imbibed pleasantly.

To drink or not to drink. I want to seek new awareness about this question, which is as old as human history.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 8

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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