Kaori Haishi is an essayist and sake journalist, and chairwoman of the Japan Sake Association. She was born in Nerima in Tokyo in 1966, and graduated from the Department of German Language and Literature, Nihon University College of Humanities and Sciences.

She then worked as a radio reporter and a journalist for a weekly women's magazine. She visits sake breweries and shochu and Awamori makers all over Japan to write articles for various media. She also gives talks, seminars, and recipe suggestions for pairing sake and food. She set up the Japan Sake Association in 2015, training sake experts to international standards, and running sake events at various locations in Japan.

Shinichi Asabe is a former associate professor at the Department of Gastroenterology, Internal Medicine, Jichi Medical University Saitama Medical Center.

After he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo in 1990, he worked at the University of Tokyo Hospital, and Department of Gastroenterology at Toranomon Hospital.

He is mainly involved in viral hepatitis studies at the National Cancer Center Japan, and after work at the Jichi Medical University Hospital, he studied the immunology of hepatitis at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, US. Back in Japan in 2010, he started to work at