Yasumoto Sake Brewery Chimney

A Brick Chimney That Outlasted the Fukui Earthquake

The Yasumoto Sake Brewery Chimney (安本酒造煙突, Yasumoto Shuzō Entotsu) is an early Showa-period brick chimney at Yasumoto Sake Brewery in Yasuhara-cho, Fukui City, Fukui Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 26, 2015. It was altered in the mid-Showa period and now stands 4.7 meters high on a footprint of 1.1 square meters.

It is the only one of the brewery's ten listings counted as a single structure rather than a building, and it was registered under a different criterion from the other nine.

A Square Stack in English Bond

The Agency for Cultural Affairs places the Yasumoto Sake Brewery Chimney just north of brewing storehouse 1. Its firebox was not at the foot of the stack but inside the storehouse, in the rice-steaming room, so the chimney drew the smoke from the fires that steamed the brewing rice.

At the base it is square in plan, about 1 meter a side measured on the outside, and the bricks are laid in English bond: one course showing only the long faces of the bricks, the next only the short ends, alternating all the way up. The pattern of the joints switching from course to course is the easiest way to recognise it.

The chimney was damaged in the Fukui earthquake of 1948, and about 4.7 meters of it remain. The Agency does not record how tall it was before the earthquake.

The Only Listing Judged on Design

The Yasumoto Sake Brewery Chimney is registered as number 18-0131 under the criterion of serving as a model of design. The other nine Yasumoto listings were all registered for their contribution to the historic landscape.

The Agency adds that the chimney conveys how the brewery's mashing operations worked. Built to serve the firebox in the steaming room, it is the outward sign of a stage of brewing that otherwise happened entirely indoors.

Seeing the Chimney

The Yasumoto Sake Brewery Chimney stands behind the front gate, north of brewing storehouse 1. Whether it can be seen from the old road through the gateway depends on whether the gate is open and where you stand.

The brewery does not offer tours, and visitors cannot pass through the gate. Take photographs from the public road without blocking traffic.