Fermented food products such as soy sauce, miso, sake, shochu, vinegar and mirin are indispensable for Japanese cuisine.The old-fashioned way of fermenting these products by hand has become rare. Nowadays their fermentation has mostly been mechanized, so as to produce them with consistent high quality.Formerly, machine-brewed products were said to taste different from those brewed by hand. But with the immense progress in our technology, we have succeeded in raising machine-brewed products’ quality so that their flavor holds its own with hand-brewed products’ flavor – or leaves it behind.By digitizing the parts that used to rely on the experience and intuition of skilled professionals, and incorporating advanced technology, we have achieved mechanized processes that sophisticatedly reproduce the hand-brewing ones.What’s more, improvements have been worked into the data used for the digitization, so as to eliminate inheritor problems for customers and let them use the digitized processes as a permanent asset.

In 2013, UNESCO designated “Washoku” (traditional Japanese cuisine) as an intangible cultural asset.Thereafter, washoku’s popularity rose and rose overseas – as witnessed by the huge success of the Japan Pavilion at Expo Milan. Yet in Japan itself the reverse phenomenon is happening and people are increasingly turning away from washoku – especially the young.We need to get washoku’s overseas popularity entrenched for the long term – it should not be allowed to end like a mere fad.And we need to get people in Japan to re-acknowledge the fineness of washoku, so that it flourishes once again as a principal player on the dinner table.In both cases, enhancement of quality and orientation toward “the real thing” will be the key.

In the future as before, Fujiwara Techno-Art will be contributing to the further development of Japanese food culture by heightening quality and steadfastly supporting the wishes of customers who pursue authentic flavors.

Fujiwara Techno-Art’s mode of interacting with customers is to do our earnest and devoted best for them.We go through repeated trial-and-error to turn their dreams and thoughts into reality. If any obstacles loom up, we step up our efforts in order to surmount them, however difficult they may be.Our strong determination not to let our technological prowess as the top company in the industry swell us with pride, but instead to provide maximum satisfaction at all times, has built up close ties of trust with our customers.

Manufacturing made-to-order products is the basis of the work that Fujiwara Techno-Art does.That means that each individual product is special.Needs are infinite, and the dreams and thoughts our customers have are of a myriad different kinds.If we had just the simplistic approach that “All you have to do is build the product to order”, we would not be able to arrive at “the thing that the customer really wants”.

At the bottom of this is our sense of ourselves as being a business partner.For us, an order is not a task that we are given, but a joint operation that we tackle in tandem with the customer.During intricate consultations we grasp the customer’s essential wishes. Then we get down to creating a proposal that will bring those wishes into being and if possible exceed expectations.The goals the customer is aiming at are the goals we too must aim at.

The composition of Fujiwara Techno-Art’s workforce is a lot different today from what it was in the old times.We now have a larger proportion of young employees. We have actively hired women to fill key positions, and we have globalized our workforce in such ways as hiring foreigners.While valuing the traditions that go back to our founding, we are continually feeling our way toward new and better organizational modes of being which bring further into play the diversity of our human resources.

The key to this is "Respecting individuality and bringing capabilities together".Each and every employee works at being a professional and hones his or her skills with all-out effort so as to make strides of progress in his or her job.As a result, a majority of our employees are self-reliant. But on the other hand, our company also has a culture of helping the other person and showing consideration.This is not simply the attitude of coworkers in the same workplace. It is a relationship of what we can call “comrades” who are thrusting ahead toward the same objective – their work.

Rather than being pyramidal, Fujiwara Techno-Art aims by all means to be a near-horizontal organization that does away with vertical distances and fences between job positions.Our management is like a fellow employee, and all employees can come and talk with it about their futures from a shared viewpoint.

Our collaborating businesses are of a high overall level and have speedy responses.They are thoroughly familiar with Fujiwara Techno-Art’s way of doing its rigorous best for its customers – so much so that they start on jobs proactively without needing instructions.They have common goals with us and similar thinking regarding work. That suffices to unite us all like a single organization, no matter what managerial or other position we are in, or which company.

Since its founding over 80 years ago, equipment and plant for fermenting soy sauce, miso, sake, shochu and the like have been the bread-and-butter that has sustained Fujiwara Techno-Art.That will not change in the future – they will go on being our mainstay products.However, we have started on challenges to put our fermentation prowess to work to create new values for the future.

The first prong of these efforts is the challenge of new lines of business that develop the component technologies of the brewing field.Commercialized versions of our continuous high-pressure steaming equipment, powder sterilizers and diatomite filtration equipment are currently attracting great attention in the general foodstuff field.The most important process in Japanese brewing is koji-making, which is Fujiwara Techno-Art’s specialty. Our solid state cultivation technology was nurtured in this field, and its essence is the mass cultivation of useful microorganisms, producing things of value that the world’s people need.Fujiwara Techno-Art will be playing the important role of developing solid state cultivation technology into an industry on a global scale – a role of which it alone is capable.

Another prong is the global expansion of our business so that all the world is our stage.That will involve collaborating with food manufacturers to spread across the world the traditional food culture in which Japan takes pride.And it will involve using the excellent Japanese fermentation production technology possessed by Fujiwara to make contributions in the brewing industries of various countries where mechanization has been problematic.Further, it will involve contributing to developing the solid state cultivation, powder sterilization and similar technologies we have created from our brewing technology into industries on a global scale, so that all the world’s people can enjoy their fruits.

Both of these prongs are projects that we would not be capable of if we had not built up sophisticated fermentation technology.Into the future, Fujiwara Techno-Art will be continuing to take on challenges of new value creation with its eyes on the limitless possibilities that fermentation technology possesses.