Yamakichi Miso and Soy Sauce Brewery Factory East Wing

What Is the Yamakichi Miso and Soy Sauce Brewery Factory East Wing?

The Yamakichi Miso and Soy Sauce Brewery Factory East Wing (ヤマキチ味噌醤油醸造元工場東棟, Yamakichi Miso Shōyu Jōzōmoto Kōjō Higashimune) is a brewing factory in Ishiwaki, Yurihonjo City, Akita Prefecture, built in 1957 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on February 27, 2023. Its core is a two-story concrete-block building, and it was extended in 1963. It covers 305 square meters and stands north of the main house.

The Yamakichi Factory East Wing is the newest of the brewery's five registered buildings. The house, shop and storehouse date from around 1916 and the west wing from the early Showa period; this one arrived in the postwar years. It was 66 years old when registered, only a little past the roughly 50-year mark that registration normally requires.

Why It Was Registered

The Yamakichi Miso and Soy Sauce Brewery Factory East Wing was listed as contributing to the historic landscape of the country, under registration number 05-0239. The Agency for Cultural Affairs says its complex exterior, built up through repeated additions, conveys how the local brewing trade grew.

At the heart of the building is an L-shaped, two-story block under a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof, with walls of concrete block. On the ground floor, the west side was the moromi room and the east side a warm-fermentation room. Moromi is the fermenting mash of koji and brine from which soy sauce is pressed, and the warm room let the brewers speed that fermentation with heat. The upper floor is divided into two storerooms. A single-story timber extension is attached to the northeast.

The roof is carried by a modified timber Truss built with paired clasping beams. The Council for Cultural Affairs presents the building as a brewing factory of concrete block topped with a modified wooden truss, a combination typical of how regional breweries were built in the postwar decades.

What to Look For

The exterior of the Yamakichi Factory East Wing is hard to read at a glance. A two-story L meets a single-story wing, and the rooflines run at different heights and angles. This layering is what the Agency means by a complex exterior: each time production grew, another piece was added, and the building still shows it.

According to Yurihonjo City, the former moromi room on the ground floor still holds its concrete fermenting tanks, called masubune. They are the fixtures at the core of soy sauce making, built into the structure itself.

The Agency's database has a photograph of the east wing seen from the southeast and another of the roof framing in the upstairs storeroom above the former moromi room. If you get the chance to go upstairs, look up at the timber framing overhead.

Visiting the Factory East Wing

The Yamakichi Miso and Soy Sauce Brewery Factory East Wing is a working factory, and brewery visits are by reservation only. Book by phone on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; groups are limited to 15 people (checked September 28, 2026). Ask when booking whether the former moromi room or the upper storerooms are included and whether photos are allowed.

The east wing stands deep in the lot north of the main house and does not face Ishiwaki Street. You cannot enter the grounds without a booking.

Directions to the brewery and booking details are on the Yamakichi Miso and Soy Sauce Brewery page.