Jokyu Soy Sauce

Jokyu Soy Sauce: Six Registered Structures in a Working Brewery in Daimyo, Fukuoka

Jokyu Soy Sauce (ジョーキュウ醤油, Jōkyū Shōyu) is a soy sauce brewery founded in 1855 in Daimyo 1-chome, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, where six buildings and structures on the premises were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 26, 2015. They are the Brewing Storehouse, the Rice Storehouse, the Front Zashiki, the Rear Zashiki, the Chimney and the Wakamiya Shrine, and their dates run from 1792 for the shrine to the early Showa era for the Rear Zashiki.

The owner is JOKYU Co., Ltd. According to the company history, the business began when Matsumura Hanjiro, from a branch of the Matsumura family whose shop name was Kusunokiya, opened Kusunokiya Shoyu in the old Konyamachi district. In 1910 the third head, Matsumura Kyukichi, registered the trademark 上久, taking one character from his own name and pairing it with 上, a sign of top quality; read aloud, it gives the company its name, Jokyu. The firm became the partnership Matsumura Kyu Shoten in 1926 and took its present form as JOKYU Co., Ltd. in 1989.

Daimyo lies just east of Fukuoka Castle. The company places its site west of the broad moat that once ran from the castle to the Naka River, and south of the Konyamachi moat. The streets around it now belong to the Tenjin shopping district, yet the brewery has made soy sauce on this plot since it opened.

How the Six Structures of Jokyu Soy Sauce Sit on the Site

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes each structure by where it stands on the plot and which building it adjoins. Put together, the layout of Jokyu Soy Sauce runs as follows.

• Brewing Storehouse (1862): a large earthen-walled storehouse in the middle of the site, east of the Rice Storehouse, still used for brewing
• Rice Storehouse (1871): a two-storey storehouse in the middle of the site, with its doorway facing the courtyard to the south
• Front Zashiki (early Meiji): a two-storey reception building in the southwest corner
• Rear Zashiki (early Showa): a two-storey parlor building on the west side, north of the Front Zashiki
• Chimney (1915): a brick chimney at the heating area in the southeast of the site
• Wakamiya Shrine (1792): a tiny shrine on a cut-stone platform in the middle of the east side

A brewing store, a store for tools, a reception parlor, a parlor that served as the family residence, a chimney for heating the soy sauce and a small household shrine: everything a soy sauce house needed for both work and daily life survives on a single plot. The Chimney was registered as a structure that has become a model of form, and the other five as structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

In date order, the Wakamiya Shrine of 1792 is more than 60 years older than the business itself. The Brewing Storehouse followed seven years after the founding, the Rice Storehouse and the Front Zashiki came in the Meiji era, the Chimney in the Taisho era, and the Rear Zashiki in the early Showa era. The construction and details of each are covered on its own page.

A Brewery That Came Through the 1945 Air Raid

The company history also tracks how the brewery grew. In 1915 it raised a red brick chimney 19 meters high, and by the late Taisho and early Showa years it held 34 brewing tanks and 102 wooden casks.

The turning point came with the Fukuoka air raid of 1945. Fire closed in on the site, and the buildings holding the tanks and casks to the north and south of today's company building burned down. The six registered structures are the ones that came through.

A new company building went up in 1989, and in 1991 it received the Fukuoka City Urban Landscape Award. The Fukuoka Prefecture Western Offshore Earthquake of 2005 brought down the upper part of the chimney, which now stands 9.5 meters high. Registration came in 2015, the 160th year of the business.

Across the road to the north stands the Matsumura Family Residence, built in 1936 as the home of Kyukichi, the third head of the business; its main house, Western-style building, storehouse, and gate and fence were registered on the same day. The company describes it as a combined Japanese and Western-style house of the early Showa era designed by the Jutaku Kairyokai, the housing reform association, and it is now in use under the name Shonankyo.

Visiting Jokyu Soy Sauce

The head office and retail shop of Jokyu Soy Sauce are at 1-12-15 Daimyo, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka, and the six registered structures stand on the same premises; the registered address, 1-330-1 Daimyo and neighboring lots, uses land lot numbers. Crossroad Fukuoka, the prefecture's official tourism site, gives the walk from Nishitetsu Fukuoka (Tenjin) Station as about 10 minutes and notes that there is no parking.

The retail shop opens from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and closes on Sundays and national holidays, according to the company's store page (checked September 2026). The Fukuoka Prefecture Products Promotion Association says visitors can see the registered buildings as well as shop, and Crossroad Fukuoka mentions Meiji-era storehouses, the family house, tools from the founding years and panels on the history of Daimyo.

No official notice sets out how far visitors may go, at what hours, or whether photographs are allowed. Jokyu Soy Sauce is still a working brewery, and the Brewing Storehouse is in daily use. Visit during shop hours, ask the staff first which parts of the site you may enter and whether you may take pictures, and follow their lead.

Each May the company holds its Jokyu Noren Market, a yearly sale and event listed by Crossroad Fukuoka.