Saiya Sake Brewery Document Storehouse

The two-storey corner of the compound

Saiya Sake Brewery Document Storehouse (斎彌酒造店文庫蔵) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse of about 1902 in the Ishiwaki district of Yurihonjo City, Akita Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 1998.

Of the eleven registered structures on this plot, only this one and the main house rise to two storeys. Its footprint is modest at 58 square metres, but among single-storey storehouses the extra height reads clearly. The roof is tiled.

A bunkogura is the storehouse a merchant family used for ledgers, deeds, papers and valuables. The requirements differ from a store for rice or sake: fire and damp are the enemies, and everything follows from that. Thick earthen walls, few and small openings, a heavy door. The Dozo-zukuri method exists for exactly this purpose.

Saiya Sake Brewery Document Storehouse occupies the southeast corner of the property, east of the main house. That is a corner site on the old highway, which makes it one of the first structures a walker on the street meets.

A gable shaped by weather

Registration as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property came on 2 September 1998 under number 05-0032, in the twelfth round of listings alongside the gate.

The criterion cited is that the building would be difficult to reproduce. Only two structures here were registered on that ground, this storehouse and the main house; the other nine came in for their contribution to the historic landscape.

What the record singles out is the gable end facing the highway. The lower part of the wall is clad in horizontal boarding, and the windows are given hoods. Yurihonjo takes hard wind and snow off the Sea of Japan, and earthen plaster that stays wet will fail. Boarding the lower half and shielding the openings was protection before it was ornament, though it does both jobs at once.

The storehouse also sits inside a covering shed. The shed itself is finished with plaster above and boarding below, so that it imitates a storehouse in its own right. City records treat this as an unusual solution. A vault for valuables, wrapped in a second skin that looks like a vault.

Holding down the ends

Stand back on the street and the logic becomes visible. Saiya Sake Brewery Document Storehouse anchors the southeast corner; a covering shed enclosing the bottle storehouse and its neighbours holds the southwest. Between them run the main house and the gate, kept lower. Height at both ends, restraint in the middle, and the street elevation gains its shape.

Look at it from the gable side. A triangle of plaster above, the long horizontal of the boarding below, and the small shadows thrown by the window hoods. There is not much decoration here, but the placing of the lines has been thought through.

In winter, snow settles along the joint between roof and boarded wall as a white band. The care taken to keep the earthen wall dry makes most sense in that season.

Visiting

Saiya Sake Brewery Document Storehouse stands inside the grounds of a working sake company and the interior is not open. Brewery tours run by Saiya Shuzōten are suspended, so viewing is from the road. Because it occupies a corner facing the highway, the gable elevation is easy to see from the public street. Photography from the road is fine; photographing within the grounds requires the company's permission.

Opposite the compound is Hakkōkōji Taya, run by the same company, open 10:00 to 17:00 and closed on Thursdays and Sundays. Its gallery shows video of the brewery to visitors who apply in advance.

From Ugo-Honjō Station on the JR Uetsu Main Line it is about 1.5 kilometres north across the Koyoshi River, roughly 20 minutes on foot. The city loop bus stops at Okeyachō. Arrangements change, so it is worth calling Saiya Shuzōten on 0184-22-0536 first.