Japan is currently the fourth largest beer market in the world. The first Japanese-owned brewery opened in the late 19th century; today there are a handful of large breweries along with a good number of craft breweries that stared to appear in the 1990s.

While pale ales are the staple of the corporate breweries, there has been a significant increase in Belgian-style ales; in fact there are now almost 40 Belgian beer bars in the Tokyo area.

While microbreweries have been successful producing these Belgian-style beers as well as India Pale Ale and other brews, the number of new microbreweries has become quite small; taxes on the best beers made in Japan- those with the highest percentage of malt - are taxed extremely high, making a six pack a beer an expensive purchase. Time will tell if these taxes are reduced to increase beer production and consumption in Japan.