Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse

About the Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse

The Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse (青木蘭麝堂酒蔵, Aoki Ranjadō Sakagura) is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri plastered storehouse at the center of the Aoki Ranjado estate in Wakisanga-cho, Fukui City, Fukui Prefecture, built around a middle storehouse of 1800 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2020. It is where the family's herbal liquor, Ranjashu, is made.

Though listed as one building, the Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse has three parts: an east-west middle storehouse running off the main house, a north-south storehouse adjoining it on the east, and a Geya lean-to along the south side of both. Its footprint is 218 square meters, many times larger than the other two registered buildings on the estate.

Why the Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse Was Registered

The Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 3 April 2020, under number 18-0201, for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as the core facility for making medicinal liquor.

Its interest lies in layers of different ages that are still put to the same use. Fukui City's list separates them: the middle storehouse dates from around 1800, the lean-to was added in the late Meiji era, and the eastern storehouse was rebuilt around 1962. The national database sums up the same history as "1800, extended in late Meiji, altered around 1962". An earthen storehouse of the late Edo period sits at the heart of a building that Meiji and Showa hands reshaped.

The family's own chronology says it took up sake brewing in the eleventh year of the Kansei era, a year before the middle storehouse, which would make the building almost as old as the business. That chronology gives the Western year as 1779, however, which does not match Kansei 11 (1799), so the date should be read as family tradition.

What to Look for at the Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse

The walls of the Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse are finished in white Shikkui lime plaster above a wainscot of Shitami-itabari clapboarding. The national description calls it sasarako-shitami: overlapping boards held by thin vertical battens notched to fit each step of the boards. Pale plaster over a boarded base gives the storehouse its crisp two-tone face.

The middle storehouse and the eastern storehouse are set at right angles, so the roof turns a corner, and the lean-to ties the two together at ground level. Seen from outside, what reads as one storehouse turns out to be several joined together.

Inside are a mashing room, a room for making the medicinal liquor and storage rooms. According to the family, the work is still done by hand, starting with steaming glutinous rice in a traditional cauldron and koshiki steamer, and the floor of the Edo-period storehouse is paved with pale blue Shakudani stone, which has been named the "prefectural stone" of Fukui and is no longer quarried. Which rooms have the stone floor is not recorded in public sources.

Visiting the Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse

The Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse is a working production space, and the family does not say whether visitors can go inside. If you would like to see the interior, contact Aoki Ranjado by phone in advance and ask about photography at the same time.

The Aoki Ranjado Sake Storehouse stands in the middle of the estate, east of the main house, with the lean-to on its south side. If you are able to get close, look for the white walls above the battened wainscot and the corner where the two roofs meet. Directions and shop hours are on the Aoki Ranjado page.