Tsurumiso Namikura Nakato

The Middle of Three Brick Storehouses

Tsurumiso Namikura Nakato (鹤味噯並倉中棟, also written Tsurumiso Namikura Nakatō, the Middle Building of the Namikura) is a single-storey brick storehouse at 216 Ekimagari, Mitsuhashi-machi, Yanagawa City, Fukuoka Prefecture, built in the early Taisho period (1912 to 1925) and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 4 December 2000.

It is the smallest of the three. Its footprint measures 45 square metres, against 62 for the north building and 70 for the south. The three sit in a line along a horiwari canal that runs on the boundary between the old town of Mitsuhashi and central Yanagawa, and the popular name for the group, Namikura, means nothing more elaborate than storehouses in a row.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs record states that this middle building is held by local tradition to have been the first of the three raised in brick. The same record dates it to the early Taisho years, later than the south building at around 1906. The owner, Tsurumiso Jozo, puts it at 1910 on its own website. Three accounts, three answers, and no surviving document that settles the matter.

Miso has been brewed on this ground since 1870, the third year of Meiji, when the company was founded. The brick rooms were koji muro: warm chambers where steamed rice and barley are inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae and held at temperature while the mould culture grows. That culture starts the fermentation. Brick carries heat and damp steadily and does not burn, which is reason enough for a miso maker in a town of timber and thatch to pay for it.

What the Register Recognised

Registration number 40-0017 was granted in the twenty-seventh round of registrations, with the notice published on 20 December 2000. A single criterion was applied: that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country. Registration is the lighter of Japan's two systems for built heritage. It obliges the owner to notify the authorities before altering the exterior, but it leaves the building in use, which is exactly what has happened here.

Look at the gable end from the water and the construction separates into layers.

The wall is laid in French bond, headers and stretchers alternating within each single course. By the Taisho years English bond had become the default for Japanese industrial brickwork, so the choice here points to an older habit of hand. Two openings are cut through that wall under segmental arches, and the north and south buildings repeat the same arch profile. The middle building supplied the vocabulary; its neighbours borrowed it.

Above the brick the logic turns Japanese. A wagoya roof structure rests on the walls, its inclined nobori-bari beams carried on a central post rather than on the king post truss used in the south building. Two carpentry traditions, two building campaigns, one continuous row. The inconsistency is itself evidence that the three went up at different moments.

The gable face is not brick at all but horizontal wooden boarding. From a passing boat that single substitution is the quickest way to tell the middle building from its neighbours.

Seeing It

The Namikura is private property and a working factory. The brick rooms have been refitted as chilled and warmed storage and remain in production, so there is no casual entry. Tsurumiso Jozo does run factory visits and miso-making sessions by prior arrangement, and that is the only route inside. A call ahead is worth the trouble if the interior matters to you.

Most visitors meet the building from a donko boat. Cruise landings lie five to ten minutes on foot from Nishitetsu Yanagawa Station, itself roughly fifty minutes by limited express from Nishitetsu Fukuoka (Tenjin). The standard one-way course runs about three kilometres in an hour and costs 2,000 yen for adults, 1,000 yen for children from age five through primary school. The Namikura appears around twenty minutes in, at the fork where the inner and outer moat routes divide. Boats usually take the inner route, so the row is seen across open water rather than from directly beneath the walls.

From land, walk to Danpei-bashi, the old wooden bridge immediately beside the works. The owner recommends this view over any other, and there is no admission charge and no restriction on photography from the bridge or the public bank. Late afternoon repays the wait. Western light deepens the red of the brick and the canal returns a second copy of it.

One name to keep straight: Namikura here refers to this row in Yanagawa, not to any similarly named warehouse group elsewhere in Kyushu. Ask a boatman for the Tsurumiso Namikura and you will be understood.