Only four bottles of Asahi Super Dry beer are left on the shelves of Ben Thai, a cosy restaurant in the Tokyo suburb of Sengawacho.

Its owner, Sakaolath Sugizaki, expects to get a few more soon, but she says her supplier is keeping the bulk of its stock for bigger customers.

That’s because Asahi, the maker of Japan’s best-selling beer, was forced to halt production at most of its 30 factories in the country at the end of last month after being hit by a cyber-attack.

While all of its facilities in Japan – including six breweries – have now partially reopened, its computer systems are still down.

That means it has to process orders and shipments manually – using pen, paper and fax machines – resulting in much fewer shipments than before the attack.

Asahi accounts for about 40% of Japan’s beer market, so its problems are having a major impact on bars, restaurants and retailers.

The company has apologised “for any difficulties caused by the recent attack” but has not yet said when it expects its operations to be fully up and running again.

The BBC visited convenience stores and supermarkets in Tokyo and Hokkaido – where workers said they were selling their current stock and hadn’t been able to place new orders for Asahi products, which also include water and food items.

Hisako Arisawa, who runs a liquor store in Tokyo, says she is worried about her customers as she can only get a few bottles of Super Dry at a time and expects the disruption to go on for at least a month.

The problem isn’t just affecting beer, she adds, there are also shortages of Asahi’s soft drinks, such as ginger beer and soda water.

Last week, some of the country’s biggest convenience store chains warned their customers to expect shortages.

FamilyMart said its Famimaru range of bottled teas, which are made by Asahi, were expected to be in short supply or out of stock.

7-Eleven halted shipments in Japan of Asahi products, while Lawsons also said it expected shortages.

Mr Nakano, who didn’t want to share his first name, works for an alcohol wholesaler.

While some shipments from Asahi have resumed, he says he is only getting about 10-20% of the normal amount.

His orders are now handwritten and taken by fax. Asahi notifies him by fax when lorries are ready to leave its factory.

Asahi also owns big brands in Europe – such as Peroni, Grolsch, and the British brewer Fuller’s – but the firm has said those operations have not been affected by the cyber-attack.

Ransomware group Qilin – which has previously hacked other major organisations – has claimed responsibility for the attack on Asahi.

It operates a platform that allows users to carry out cyber-attacks in exchange for a percentage of extortion proceeds.

Asahi has not confirmed the nature of the attack on its operations but has said data suspected to have been leaked in the hack had been found on the internet.

It is the latest in a series of cyber-attacks by other hacking groups that have hit major firms around the world, including carmaker Jaguar Land Rover and retail giant Marks and Spencer.

Travellers were delayed at a number of European airports in September after a ransomware attack disrupted check-in and boarding software.

Back in Japan, a cyber-attack paralysed operations at a container terminal in the city of Nagoya for three days in 2024.

Japan Airlines was also hacked last Christmas, causing delays and cancellations to domestic flights.

While Japan’s image around the world may be of a technologically advanced nation, some experts have warned it does not have enough cybersecurity professionals and has low rates of digital literacy when it comes to business software.

This issue was highlighted last year when officials finally stopped asking people to submit documents to the government using floppy disks, even though they fell out of fashion in much of the rest of the world in the 1990s.

Japan is vulnerable to cyber-attacks “given a reliance on legacy systems and a society with a high level of trust,” Cartan McLaughlin from Nihon Cyber Defence Group told the BBC.

Many organisations in the country are not prepared for attacks and are willing to pay ransoms, which makes them attractive to hackers, he added.

Speaking at a news conference this week, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the Asahi cyber-attack was being investigated.

“We will continue to improve our cyber capabilities,” he added.

Earlier this year, the Japanese government passed a landmark law giving it more powers in the event of cyber-attacks.

Experts have praised the Active Cyber Defense Law (ACD), because it allows the government to share more information with companies, and also empowers the police and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to mount their own attacks to neutralise attackers’ servers.

But that is little consolation to small businesses like Ben Thai restaurant and its customers.

Owner Sakaolath says she’s not sure what will happen the next time she puts in an order for Super Dry, and nor do many others across Japan.

Additional reporting by Chie Kobayashi in Tokyo

President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of an expected meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, signalling a flare-up in trade tensions between the two economic giants that sent shares in the US tumbling.

In a post on social media, Trump hit back at Beijing’s move earlier this week to tighten its rules for exports of rare earths, accusing China of “becoming very hostile” and trying to hold the world “captive”.

He said he saw “no reason” to meet with President Xi later this month, and later on Friday threatened an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods as well as export controls on “critical software”.

The new measures against China will take effect on 1 November, Trump said.

Financial markets dropped in the wake of Trump’s remarks, with the S&P 500 closing down 2.7%, its steepest fall since April.

China dominates production of rare earths and certain other key materials, which are key components in cars, smartphones and many other items.

The last time Beijing tightened export controls – after Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods early this year – there was an outcry from many US firms reliant on the materials. Carmaker Ford even had to temporarily pause production.

In addition to tightening rules for rare earth exports, China has opened a monopoly investigation into the US tech firm Qualcomm that could stall its acquisition of another chipmaker.

Although Qualcomm is based in the US, a significant portion of its business is concentrated in China.

Beijing has also said it will charge new port fees to ships with ties to the US, including those owned or operated by US firms.

“Some very strange things are happening in China!” Trump wrote in a post on social media on Friday. “They are becoming very hostile.”

The US and China have been in a fragile trade détente since May, when the two sides agreed to drop triple-digit tariffs on each others’ goods that had nearly stopped trade between the two countries.

The move left US tariffs on Chinese goods facing an added 30% levy compared with the start of the year, while US goods entering China face a new 10% tariff.

Officials have held a series of talks since then on matters including TikTok, agricultural purchases, and the trade of rare earths and advanced technology like semiconductors.

The two sides were expected to meet again this month at a summit in South Korea.

China expert Jonathan Czin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Xi’s recent actions were a bid to shape the upcoming talks, noting that the recent rare earths directive does not go into effect immediately.

“He’s looking for ways to seize the initiative,” he said. “The Trump administration is having to play a game of whack-a-mole and deal with these issues as they come up.”

He added that he did not think China was worried about US retaliation in response.

“What China took away from the Liberation Day tariffs and the cycle of escalation followed by de-escalation is that the Chinese side had a higher pain threshold,” he said. “From their perspective, the Trump administration blinked.”

In prior rounds of trade talks, China has pushed for looser US restrictions on semiconductors. It is also interested in securing more stable tariff policies that would make it easier for its businesses to sell into the US.

Xi had previously used as leverage his country’s dominance of rare earths production.

But the export rules unveiled this week target overseas defence manufacturers, making them particularly serious, said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Nothing makes America move like targeting our defence industry,” she said. “The US is going to have to negotiate because we have limited options, and in an era of rising geopolitical tension and potential conflict, we need to build our industrial defence base.”

While a Trump-Xi meeting now looks unlikely, she said it was not necessarily completely off the table. Ms Baskaran said there’s still time and room for talks. China’s new rules don’t take effect until December.

“Negotiations are likely imminent,” she said. “Who does them and where they happen will be determined with time.”