Hibiki Suntory Whisky, The Masterpiece of Japanese Artistry

In this film directed by Edgar Berg for Hibiki Suntory Whisky, the fabric is the screen. Every fold a landscape, every thread a season. Featuring Anna Sawai in her debut as Hibiki’s first Global Ambassador. Produced by Instinct.

The campaign is built on a rare collaboration with Chiso, one of Japan’s oldest kimono houses. The kimono at its centre was crafted using traditional yuzen dyeing techniques, with seasonal motifs drawn from Japan’s landscapes. The film draws the parallel between kimono making and whisky blending, two crafts shaped by time and precision.

It unfolds entirely on the surface of that kimono. No set, no backdrop, no composite. The silk transforms into mountains, dense forests, rivers catching daylight, and seasons shifting with the movement of the fabric. A butterfly appears and begins its journey across the painted terrain, guiding the eye from one landscape to the next in a continuous, unbroken movement, until it reaches the Yamazaki distillery. The butterfly is a kokimurasaki motif, the same noble purple found on the neck of the Hibiki bottle.

The animation is signed by Clément Soulmagnon, with key concepts hand drawn by the illustrator Ayame Higuchi, whose brushwork turns thread into living terrain. The drawings were integrated into a 3D environment where the silk takes on volume, weight and light, folding, breathing, catching shadow as the butterfly moves across its surface. The camera travels the fabric as though travelling over actual cloth.

Anna Sawai appears in the final moments. The animated world gives way to the real one. She wears the kimono, the same fabric that held mountains and forests now resting on her shoulders. The butterfly lands on her hand. What was drawn becomes worn. She narrates throughout, speaking of beauty in balance, of harmony shaped by the purity of water, of a whisky that is not simply created but composed. Like a kimono. Like a poem. Like a season slowly unfolding. It is the Japanese idea of wa, balance and harmony, which is also how a Hibiki is blended, from the Yamazaki, Hakushu and Chita distilleries.

Noé Cotter photographs the campaign stills, placing the Hibiki collection directly onto the hand dyed kimono. Natural, sunlit light, unhurried and unforced, letting the 24 facets of the bottle and the texture of the silk speak for themselves.

Two craft films directed by Jimmy Vi, The Art of Washi and The Craft of Kimono, follow Anna Sawai to Kyoto. One enters Chiso’s historic atelier. The other goes to the studio of washi paper artist Eriko Horiki, who has hand crafted the labels on every Hibiki bottle since 1989, labels that give the whisky its face and turn water, fibre and time into something enduring.

Instinct guided the campaign from original concept through to worldwide delivery, with Maison BETC as agency, Toboggan as Japanese production service, and departments across the Eddy group including Eddy Animation. It runs throughout 2026 across more than fifteen markets.