Two rows of cedar logs holding up a floor
Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse (正木本店仕込庫, Masaki Honten Shikomiko) is a two-storey timber brewery hall of 1918 in the town of Matsuno, Kitauwa District, Ehime Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 27 October 2017. It has a tiled roof and a floor area of 274 square meters. Of the five buildings on the site it is the only one whose date is fixed to a single year.
The hall stands west of the storage warehouse and crosses it at right angles, its ridge running east to west. It measures twelve Ken along the ridge, about 22 meters, and six ken across, about 11 meters, under a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles. Shikomi, the process the building is named for, is the stage at which steamed rice, kōji mould and water are combined in tall vats and left to ferment. It is the heart of sake brewing, and this hall was built to house it.
Inside there are no partitions. The ground floor rises 4 meters, and two rows of cedar posts run down the centre, spaced every two ken, roughly 3.6 meters, carrying the floor frame above. The posts are 27 centimeters in diameter and were never squared. They keep the round section of the tree, bark stripped and surface polished.
The logic of the round post
Squaring a log tidies its appearance and costs it strength, since the corners cut away are the outer, denser wood. Left round, a post of the same nominal size carries more. The 27 centimeter diameter and the two ken spacing were worked backwards from the load: the floor above, and the weight of the fermentation vats standing on it.
The 4 meter ground-floor height comes from the same arithmetic. Tall vats had to stand upright with room for brewers to work over their rims. Concentrating the posts into two central rows was a way of leaving the vat floor as clear as possible. What began as a set of practical constraints ended as an unusually orderly interior.
Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse was entered on the register under a single criterion, contribution to the historic landscape of the country, as number 38-119 in the 88th round. The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry calls it a large-scale brewing hall. The description carries a quiet historical point: a brewing space on this scale existed in a mountain town in Shikoku by the 1910s.
Where it sits among the five buildings
Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse stands deep in the plot, hidden from the former Matsumaru Kaidō behind the shop and the storage warehouse. From the road you catch a ridge line and part of a gable end between other roofs rather than the building itself.
Knowing the sequence changes what you see. From the street inward the order runs: shop and main house, then storage warehouse, then the boiler room and meeting room attached to the storage warehouse's west face, then this hall crossing at right angles, and finally the draft sake warehouse parallel to it on the north. Rice was steamed at the boiler room, fermented here, and the pressed sake moved north.
The plan is a diagram of the process. Standing on the road and looking at the roofs, it helps to picture that order continuing behind the wall in front of you.
Visiting
Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse is privately owned, and no interior opening is announced by the town of Matsuno or by Ehime Prefecture. Because it sits at the back of the plot, even the exterior is only partly visible. The grounds themselves are off limits.
There is no restriction on photographing the site from public roads. To catch the ridge, step back from the old road and find slightly higher ground, where the overlapping roofs of the five buildings separate out.
Matsumaru Station on the JR Yodo Line is the closest, some three minutes away on foot. Walking the old road and reading the group of buildings from outside is the practical way to see this one. Drivers should use National Route 381 and park near the station. Questions can be put to the Furusato Sōsei Section at Matsuno Town Hall, on 0895-42-1116.
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Q&A
- Can visitors enter Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse?
- No interior opening is announced. The building is privately owned and stands at the back of the plot, so even the exterior is only partly visible from public roads. Please stay off the grounds.
- When was Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse built?
- In 1918, the seventh year of the Taishō era. It is the only one of the five registered buildings on the site with a date fixed to a single year; the others are given as late Edo or late Taishō.
- What does the inside of Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse look like?
- A single undivided hall with a ground-floor height of 4 meters. Two central rows of polished cedar logs, 27 centimeters in diameter, stand every two ken and carry the second-floor framing.
- What was Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse used for?
- For shikomi, the stage where steamed rice, kōji and water are combined in vats and fermented. The tall ground floor was needed so brewers could work over the rims of the vats.
- Where exactly is Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse?
- At 86 Matsumaru, Matsuno-cho, Kitauwa-gun, Ehime Prefecture, about three minutes on foot from Matsumaru Station, set behind the shop and storage warehouse on the western side of the plot.
Basic Information
| Name | Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse (正木本店仕込庫) |
|---|---|
| Location | 86 Matsumaru, Matsuno-cho, Kitauwa-gun, Ehime Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) |
| Year Designated | Registered on 27 October 2017 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, floor area 274 square meters. Twelve ken by six ken |
| Owner | Not published in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database |
| Public Access | Interior closed. Exterior only partly visible from public roads |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00012068
- Cultural Heritage Online, Masaki Honten Brewing Warehouse
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/301019
- Minutes of the 183rd Cultural Properties Subdivision, Council for Cultural Affairs, 21 July 2017
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkashingikai/bunkazai/17/pdf/r1395986_04.pdf
- The former Matsumaru Kaido (Matsuno Town Hall, Furusato Sosei Section)
- https://www.town.matsuno.ehime.jp/soshiki/3/1263.html
- List of Registered Cultural Properties in Ehime (Ehime Prefectural Board of Education)
- https://ehime-c.esnet.ed.jp/bunkazai/kennobunkazai/tourokubunkazai/bun-touroku2.htm
Last verified: 2026.09.05