Handa Red Brick Building (former Kabuto Beer Factory)

Three Wings Added as the Beer Sold

The largest single element of the Handa Red Brick Building is not the tall original block but the storehouse wing that wraps around it. Built from 1908 (Meiji 41), with further sections added in 1918 and 1921, it grew in three brick ranges that were appended one after another, running anticlockwise from the north side of the original main wing toward the west. Each range is a two-storey brick building with a gabled iron-plate roof, and together they gave the brewery the fermentation and storage space it needed as Kabuto Beer found its market.

The sequence of construction is itself a record of the company's ambitions. Marusan Brewery, founded by figures from the Nakano vinegar house (today's Mizkan) and the family that would later start the Shikishima bakery (Pasco), had set out to compete with the large brewers of Sapporo, Tokyo and Osaka. Winning a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition raised demand, and the storehouse wing is where that demand was accommodated.

Why the Storehouse Wing Matters

Like its neighbours, the wing was entered on the register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 2004 (registration number 23-0136) as a model of its type. Its value lies partly in scale, with a building area of about 1,359 square metres, and partly in the quality of its brickwork, which repays a close look.

The walls are laid in English bond, a pattern that alternates courses of headers and stretchers to produce a strong, disciplined face. The gable ends are treated as pediments, the triangular crowning form borrowed from classical architecture, and each is set with a round window. The openings along the walls are comb-shaped arches finished with keystones, echoing the detailing of the original main wing so that the additions read as one composition rather than a patchwork. Seeing all three ranges together shows how a working factory could be extended over more than a decade without losing coherence.

The wing also carries the building's clearest war wound. The north-facing brick, where the storehouse meets the outside world, bears the pitting of machine-gun fire from a P-51 Mustang during the Handa air raid of 1945, by which time the factory had been requisitioned as a warehouse for the Nakajima Aircraft works.

What to Look For on a Visit

Walk the north and west faces slowly. The round windows in the pediments are easy to miss from directly below, so step back to see how they sit within the triangular gables. Trace the header-and-stretcher rhythm of the English bond, and note where later ranges meet earlier ones. The strafing scars are on this side too, a sobering counterpoint to the decorative brickwork above them.

After production ended the premises spent years as a cornstarch plant before the city took charge, and a seismic retrofit completed in 2015 opened the whole complex to the public year-round. Inside, exhibition rooms trace the history of Kabuto Beer, which a local preservation group revived in 2005 after decades out of production; both a Meiji-recipe and a Taisho-recipe version are served on draught at the Re-BRICK cafe. The building sits between the Handa Canal and the Niimi Nankichi Memorial Museum, so the storehouse wing fits easily into a half-day of walking.