Okunomatsu Sake Brewery

Six Storehouses of Okunomatsu Sake Brewery in Kamegai

Okunomatsu Sake Brewery (奥の松酒造, Okunomatsu Shuzō) is a sake maker in Nihonmatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture, that traces its founding to 1716, and six storehouses at its brewery site in Kamegai, built between the early Taisho and early Showa periods, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on July 23, 2004. The brewery makes the Okunomatsu label, and all six buildings carry the brewery's name in the national register.

According to the brewery's own history, the line begins in the early Edo period with Yusa Kinnojo, a retainer of Niwa Mitsushige, lord of the Nihonmatsu domain. From 1716 the family traded under the house name Aburaya, "the oil shop," making sake alongside miso, soy sauce and lamp oil. The oil business later passed to a branch family and the main house concentrated on brewing. By the Meiji and Taisho years it had grown into a brewery of some 1,000 koku a year, and in the late Taisho and early Showa years it took the name Aburaya Shuzoten.

An honors prize at a national sake competition in 1933 was followed in 1935 by the National Honor Cup and other awards, and the brewery became known as "Ihei's ginjo brewery." A profile on the Jizake Kuramoto-kai site explains that the family heads alternated two names, Kinnojo and Ihei, from one generation to the next. The label name is said to take two characters, oku and matsu, from a family seal reading "Ōshū Nihonmatsu."

The Six Buildings and How the Site Is Laid Out

The six Okunomatsu Sake Brewery buildings were entered in the 43rd round of registrations under the consecutive numbers 07-0071 through 07-0076, with the official notice following on August 17, 2004. Each was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. In order of construction:

• Second-Grade Storehouse Middle Building: early Taisho period, raised to 2 storeys in the early Showa period, and the oldest surviving building on the site
• First-Grade Storehouse: early Showa period, a 3-storey brewing storehouse with a reinforced concrete ground floor under a 2-storey earthen store, and at 207 square meters the largest of the six
• Second-Grade Storehouse North Building: early Showa period, a 2-storey timber brewing storehouse
• Second-Grade Storehouse South Building: early Showa period, a 2-storey reinforced concrete brewing storehouse with the characters for "Oku," "no" and "Matsu" raised on its south face
• Koji Storehouse: early Showa period, 2 storeys of reinforced concrete under a timber roof frame and a gabled roof
• Pressing Storehouse: early Showa period, a 2-storey earthen storehouse said to have begun as a brewing store

Pieced together, the Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions give a rough plan. The North Building of the Second-Grade Storehouse stands near the middle of the brewery, toward the north, with its ridge running east to west. The Middle Building adjoins it on the south and the South Building adjoins that, so the three read as one long block. The Koji Storehouse sits to the northeast of this block, its ridge roughly north to south. The Pressing Storehouse turns its west gable to the street on the west side of the site and closes the south end of the brewery frontage. The 3-storey First-Grade Storehouse, ridge running north to south, is described as a landmark along the prefectural road.

What sets the Okunomatsu Sake Brewery group apart is the mix of timber, earthen Dozo-zukuri and reinforced concrete on one plot. The First-Grade Storehouse, the North Building and the Koji Storehouse all have timber king post truss roof frames, and the North Building and Koji Storehouse both carry a storehouse-style Hachimaki band under the eaves. The lower walls of the Pressing Storehouse gables are scored to look like stone masonry, matching the South Building. New structural methods sit behind a storehouse face, and the approach repeats from one building to the next.

Okunomatsu Sake Brewery Since the 1950s

The business became Okunomatsu Jozo Co., Ltd. in 1955 and, on moving its head office in 1968, Okunomatsu Sake Brewery Co., Ltd. The Kuramoto-kai profile says the sales and bottling departments moved at that point from the old brewery in town to the new head office. In 1974 the Yachiyo brewery opened at the foot of Mount Adatara, and in the same year the company set up the Higashi Nihon Shuzo cooperative with nearby brewers. The brewery states that Okunomatsu sake is now made by that cooperative.

The six buildings in Kamegai are most likely that "old brewery in town," but the sources do not give its address, and published material does not say how the Okunomatsu Sake Brewery buildings in Kamegai are used today. The early Showa years in which the First-Grade Storehouse and the South Building went up coincide with the period when the brewery made its name for ginjo sake.

Seeing the Okunomatsu Sake Brewery Storehouses

The six Okunomatsu Sake Brewery buildings in Kamegai are not run as a visitor site, and no interior openings have been announced (checked September 30, 2026). The First-Grade Storehouse stands on the prefectural road and the Pressing Storehouse faces the west street gable-first, so these two are the easiest to see from public roads. The site is private property: view it from the road without entering, and keep any photography to the street.

The Kamegai site lies about 700 meters in a straight line northeast of Nihonmatsu Station on the JR Tohoku Main Line, roughly a 10-minute walk.

To taste the sake, go to the Okunomatsu Sake Brewery head office at Chomei 69, about 5 kilometers southwest of Kamegai in a straight line. Its Sakagura Gallery doubles as a shop where almost the whole range, including brewery-only bottlings, can be tasted free of charge, open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and since September 2025 also on Saturdays and Sundays. Tours of the bottling and production lines are by telephone booking made by the day before, and are not offered on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays, when the plant is closed. The nearest station to the head office is Sugita on the JR Tohoku Main Line, about 10 minutes on foot. Neither the gallery nor the plant is part of the six registered buildings.