Suehiro Sake Brewery Kaeigura

A working brewery yard in the old merchant quarter

Suehiro Sake Brewery Kaeigura (末廣酒造嘉永蔵) is a sake brewery compound in Nisshincho, Aizuwakamatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture, where nine buildings and structures raised between 1892 and the late Taisho era were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 2 November 2018. Six are buildings and three are structures. All belong to Suehiro Sake Brewery Co., Ltd., and all are still in use by the company.

The name is read Kaeigura, and it comes from the Kaei era, when the house began brewing in 1850. Suehiro uses it to distinguish this site from Hakushigura, its other production base in Aizumisato. People in Aizu often say simply Suehiro.

The compound sits in what was the merchant quarter below Wakamatsu Castle, with streets running along its east and north sides. The main house and the new storehouse face the street, the front gate stands between them, and a brick wall closes the north corner. Behind that street frontage, brewing and storage buildings line the south, north and west edges of the yard, with a brick chimney rising near the centre.

Burned twice, rebuilt twice

In 1850 Kanehiro, second son of the Shinjo family, left the main house and began brewing under the name Inokichi. The Shinjo had supplied sake to the Aizu domain. The era name of that founding year became the name of the brewery.

The Boshin War of 1868 and 1869 destroyed the buildings, and brewing resumed in 1869. Under the third Inokichi the premises were rebuilt, and the new storehouse was completed in 1892. Then a city fire in 1906 took most of the storehouses again. That is why the new storehouse, despite its name, is the oldest surviving building on the site, and why almost everything else dates from the rebuilding that followed.

Storehouses No. 3 and No. 4 went up in 1907, the main house in 1909, and storehouse No. 1 in 1922, the same year the main house was enlarged. Storehouse No. 5 belongs to the late Taisho era. The nine listed items fall within roughly thirty years because the site was rebuilt in one concentrated push.

Those decades were also years of rapid change in brewing technique. Suehiro installed an Engelberg rice-milling machine in 1908 and began polishing its own rice. In January 1917 Kaneichiro Kagi, credited with developing the yamahai starter, ran comparative trials here of yamahai, sokujo and kimoto starters, and he returned to advise the brewery until 1920.

In September 1915 the bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi called at Kaeigura on his first return from the United States in sixteen years. Sakae Kobayashi, his guardian, was the younger brother of the third Inokichi's wife, and Noguchi's own younger brother Seizo worked at the brewery. A photograph taken in the large hall on the upper floor of the office wing survives in the company's collection.

Hakushigura opened in Aizumisato in 1996 and took over the bulk of production, but Kaeigura still brews in limited quantity. The 2018 listing covers the whole of a compound that has stayed at work.

How the yard is laid out

Kaeigura divides into two characters: the face it turns to the street, and the working ground behind. The street side holds the main house, the new storehouse, the front gate and the brick wall, where Japanese timber construction meets brick and granite. Behind them stand storehouses No. 1, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 together with the brick chimney, arranged along the path that rice and sake once took through the yard.

Tours begin in the tall open hall just inside the entrance and continue into the brewing storehouses. The chimney, hidden from the street, and the junctions where one storehouse meets the next make sense only once you are inside that circuit.

At the northeast corner the brick wall marks the boundary with the street, with a front garden between it and the main house and a service opening at each end. Between the office wing and the new storehouse, the front gate faces east, a steel arch carrying lamps spanning its granite posts. To read the street frontage as a composition, step back to the far side of the road.

The nine listed items

All nine were entered in the 91st round of registration on 2 November 2018 under the criterion for structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 07-0185 to 07-0193.

• Main House (07-0185), 1909, enlarged 1922. Timber frame, 2 and 3 storeys, building area 414 square metres
• New Storehouse (07-0186), 1892. Dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, building area 45 square metres
• Storehouse No. 1 (07-0187), 1922. Dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, building area 365 square metres
• Storehouse No. 3 (07-0188), 1907. Dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, building area 146 square metres
• Storehouse No. 4 (07-0189), 1907. Dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, building area 146 square metres
• Storehouse No. 5 (07-0190), late Taisho era. Dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, building area 219 square metres
• Brick Chimney (07-0191), late Meiji era. Brick, height 10 metres
• Brick Wall (07-0192), late Meiji era. Brick, length 17 metres
• Front Gate (07-0193), late Meiji era. Stone, frontage 2.2 metres

All nine are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties. The registration system, introduced in 1996, assumes that owners will look after such places by continuing to use them. A brewery still at work is close to the intent of that system.

Visiting

Suehiro Sake Brewery Kaeigura offers guided tours of the brewery. A tour lasts about 30 minutes and costs nothing. Individual visitors need no reservation; groups must book ahead. Start times change with the season: from March to November there are six, at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.; from December to February there are three, at 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. The brewery closes on the second Wednesday of each month.

The shop on the premises opens from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and closes on the same second Wednesday. The café Kyo opens from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with last orders at 4:00 p.m., and closes on Wednesdays and on the first and third Thursdays, except when those fall on a public holiday.

Photography of the exteriors is unrestricted. Inside, this is a working production site, so follow the guide's instructions.

The postal address is 12-38 Nisshincho, Aizuwakamatsu City. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the older cadastral form, 159 Nisshincho and others. From JR Aizu-Wakamatsu Station, take the Haikara-san loop bus and get off at Nanukamachi-chuo, about 5 minutes on foot, or at Yamatomachi, about 1 minute on foot. By car it is about 15 minutes from the Aizu-Wakamatsu interchange of the Ban-etsu Expressway, and there is parking for 20 vehicles.

This information was checked on 17 September 2026. Hours and fees change, so confirm on the brewery's own site before travelling.