The Kamikaze is nothing like a delicious drink that hints promises of a trip to the floor. It is a drink that delivers on the hint. It has a short history, a bad name, and a durable recipe. The name is the reason many people will not order it and the reason it has been increasingly disguised or renamed on bar menus over the past several decades. The recipe is the reason it survived anyway.
The Kamikaze is also the direct ancestor of the Cosmopolitan, the Lemon Drop, and a number of other modern vodka drinks. Understanding the Kamikaze means understanding what bartenders were building with vodka in the 1960s and 1970s, before vodka was taken seriously and before the craft cocktail movement arrived.
Occupied Japan, 1945
The most commonly cited origin places the Kamikaze at an American officers’ club in occupied Japan shortly after the end of the Second World War. American forces were stationed in Japan from 1945 through 1952, and during that period the American military ran a network of clubs on bases where officers and enlisted personnel drank.
Vodka was plentiful because the Soviet Union was briefly an ally, and Russian vodka moved through the Pacific through channels that are not well documented. Triple sec and lime were both available through Navy supply lines. A bartender, unnamed in most accounts but sometimes attributed to the NCO club at Yokosuka Naval Base, combined the three in roughly equal parts, called it the Kamikaze in reference to the Japanese suicide pilots whose attacks had been a feature of the Pacific war, and served it cold.
The name is uncomfortable in retrospect, and increasingly uncomfortable in the present. It was meant as dark humor, which was common in American military drinking culture of the period. That humor has not aged well, and many modern bars either rename the drink or keep it on the menu with awareness of what the name references.
The drink itself is not responsible for its name, and the recipe predates modern American cocktail culture by more than two decades. It is worth separating the two.
From military club to American bar
The Kamikaze moved out of Japan and into American civilian bars in the 1970s, likely through servicemen who had rotated through the Pacific during and after the war. By the late 1970s, it was on menus in coastal American cities as a specialty shot or short drink. The original form was served as a small cocktail, about two to three ounces total, in a coupe or cocktail glass. The shot version, which is how most people encountered it in the 1980s and 1990s, came later.
The shot version is largely responsible for the Kamikaze’s reputation. Served as a cold shot chased hard, the drink became associated with college bars and aggressive drinking. The original cocktail version is a different and more civilized drink.
In 1985 or 1986, Cheryl Cook at the Strand in South Beach, Miami, made a version of the Kamikaze with a splash of cranberry juice for color and called it the Cosmopolitan. The direct lineage from the Kamikaze to the Cosmopolitan is documented in Cook’s own accounts and in Toby Cecchini’s writing on the drink’s evolution. What makes the Cosmopolitan a Cosmopolitan, structurally, is that it is a Kamikaze with cranberry.
What the drink actually is
The Kamikaze is a member of the sour family, the same broad category as the Daiquiri, the Margarita, the Sidecar, and the Gimlet. The sour formula is a spirit, a citrus, and a sweetener, balanced to finish clean.
In the Kamikaze, the spirit is vodka, the citrus is lime, and the sweetener is orange liqueur. This is a pattern worth recognizing, because it is shared with the Cosmopolitan (add cranberry), the Margarita (swap tequila for vodka), and the Sidecar (swap brandy for vodka, lemon for lime). These drinks are all cousins of the same underlying formula, and a bartender who can make one well can make them all.
Making one well
The vodka has to have body. A Kamikaze with thin or harsh vodka is sharp and chemical-tasting, because there is nothing in the drink to hide behind. Silverton Vodka’s creamy texture and clean finish carry the lime without disappearing under it.
The orange liqueur has to be a real one. A triple sec with mostly sugar and weak orange flavor produces a Kamikaze that tastes flat and sweet. Üla Orange Liqueur has the bitter-orange depth the drink needs, and its warmth balances the lime’s acid.
The lime has to be fresh. Bottled lime juice is flat, slightly sulfurous, and noticeably worse in a three-ingredient drink where nothing can be hidden.
The ratio should be approximately equal parts, adjusted to taste. Equal parts is a 1:1:1 drink that finishes sharp. Some bartenders prefer a slightly higher vodka ratio (1½:1:1) for a more spirit-forward result. Either works.
Shake hard with ice. Strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a lime wheel or a twist.
Variations worth knowing
The Kamikaze Shot, two ounces total in a chilled shot glass, is how most people encountered the drink in the 1990s. It is the same recipe at smaller volume.
The Melon Kamikaze adds half an ounce of a Japanese melon liqueur. It is bright green and slightly sweet and works better than it should.
The Cosmopolitan is a Kamikaze with cranberry juice added. If you make a Kamikaze and splash it with cranberry, you have made a Cosmopolitan.
The Lemon Drop is a Kamikaze with lemon instead of lime, often with a sugared rim.
The recipe
1 oz Silverton Vodka 1 oz Üla Orange Liqueur 1 oz fresh lime juice
Shake with ice until cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
A drink worth keeping
The Kamikaze has an unfortunate name and a careless reputation, both of which have kept it out of the craft cocktail revival. The drink itself, built as a proper cocktail rather than a shot, is a clean, balanced sour that sits at the structural center of modern vodka drinking. It also happens to be a direct ancestor of the Cosmopolitan, which the drinking public rediscovered decades later without realizing they had the recipe the whole time.
I had my first Kamikaze at a dive bar in Olympia, Washington, where it was served as a short cocktail and not as the aggressive shot that most Americans know. The bartender there made it the original way, and the drink made sense for the first time.
Sources
- David Wondrich, Imbibe! (Perigee, 2007), on postwar vodka’s entry into American drinking.
- Toby Cecchini, Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life (Broadway Books, 2003), on the Kamikaze-to-Cosmopolitan lineage.
- Dale DeGroff, The Craft of the Cocktail (Clarkson Potter, 2002), on technique.
- Difford’s Guide entry on the Kamikaze.
About the author
Adam Messick is the founder of Abiqua Spirit Distillery in Silverton, Oregon, with ten years in the craft spirits industry. With help from family and friends, he handles the day-to-day work of blending, bottling, and labeling every release of Silverton Vodka, Gallon House Gin, and Üla Orange Liqueur. Silverton Vodka received the American Distilling Institute’s Gold Medal in 2019. Silverton Vodka, Gallon House Gin, and Üla Orange Liqueur have each won Silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
Abiqua Spirit Distillery is a small-batch spirits company producing finely crafted potato vodka, gin, and orange liqueur from Silverton, Oregon. Contact: info@abiquaspiritdistillery.com or (503) 837-9869.