Yagisawa Kiseki no Hishio Shoyu (八木澤商店 奇跡の醤)

The story behind it

In the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the tsunami took everything Yagisawa Shoten had in Rikuzentakata: the brewery, the plant, all of it. A place of brewing handed down for more than 200 years was gone in a single day.

What made the restart possible was a batch of moromi (the fermenting mash that becomes shoyu) that had been moved elsewhere before the disaster and survived. From that one barrel the fermentation cultures were kept alive, the brewery was rebuilt, and this shoyu, named Kiseki no Hishio, was born.

It is made entirely in Japan: soybeans and wheat from Iwate, salt from Nagasaki. Many people still buy it as a symbol of the recovery.