Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters

What the Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters Are

The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters (萬乗醸造離れ, Banjō Jōzō Hanare) are a Taisho-period single-storey reception wing in Otakacho, Midori Ward, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on 31 July 2007 under registration number 23-0241. They comprise a 10-mat room extending west from the 8-mat room at the northwest of the main house, and a tea room to its southwest.

The floor area is 48 square meters under a tiled roof. In the northwest corner of the 10-mat room stands a raised alcove of 2 mats, understood to be a copy of the Zangetsutei tea room of the Omotesenke school. A raised alcove lifts the floor by one step and introduces a difference of rank inside a single room. The tea room is 3.5 mats, with boards fitted in front of and beside a small alcove. The Agency for Cultural Affairs description also gives the tea room as 4.5 mats, so the two accounts count the space differently.

Both rooms belong to the Sukiya-zukuri tradition, in which the methods of the tea room are carried into the reception rooms of a house. Slender members and bark-edged posts loosen the heavier formality of shoin architecture. The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters are a modern work in that line.

Why It Was Registered

The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters were registered under the criterion of serving as a model of design. Of the twelve structures registered at the brewery, this is the only one to which that criterion was applied; the other eleven were registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

The difference in criterion is a difference in reasoning. The other eleven were judged by their part in the street and the brewery compound. The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters were judged on the quality of the building itself. The Aichi Prefectural Board of Education describes them as finely made modern sukiya architecture.

A brewer's reception rooms were built to this standard because of whom the household received. The same commentary values the main house, the detached quarters and the tea room as evidence of the culture of Nagoya's business class. The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters show that this was a place for meeting people as much as a place for making sake.

What to Look For

The raised alcove in the 10-mat room is the heart of the Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters. Zangetsutei, the room it copies, descends from a room in Sen no Rikyu's residence and is known for the post beside its alcove and for the raised platform. Reproducing it at 2 mats means carrying over proportion and posture rather than dimensions.

The tea room alcove is unusual in its own way. Boards are fitted in front of it and to its side, narrowing the opening of a small alcove so that attention on a hanging scroll or a flower arrangement is drawn tighter. It departs from the standard treatment of a Tokonoma, which suggests a decision by the client or the carpenter.

The rooms continue from the 8-mat room of the main house, so formality rises as one moves deeper into the dwelling. A garden lies in front of them.

The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters sit at the back of the site and are not visible from outside. None of these features can be examined without an opening to the public. The commentaries published by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Aichi Prefectural Board of Education are the sources available for what they contain.

Visiting

The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters are not open. They stand inside the premises of an operating sake company and the grounds cannot be entered. Because they lie at the back of the site, even the exterior is difficult to see from the public road. The company states on the FAQ page of its official site that it does not sell sake at the brewery, so there is no shop or visitor reception.

Photography is limited to what can be taken from the public road, which does not include the Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters themselves. Avoid photographing into the premises or at people at work. No scheduled special opening could be confirmed in the published information of the Agency for Cultural Affairs or the Aichi Prefectural Board of Education.

Odaka Station on the JR Tokaido Main Line is about 15 minutes away on foot. Enter the old quarter from the station and follow the left bank of the Otaka River westward into the brewing street. Midori Ward publishes a 5.7 kilometre walking route, the Odaka Castle Town Course, which runs through it toward the castle site. The Banjo Brewery Detached Quarters lie behind the black street wall of the main house.