Watanabe Family Residence

What Is the Watanabe Family Residence?

The Watanabe Family Residence (渡邉家住宅, Watanabe-ke Jūtaku) is the premises of a sake-brewing family in Ichinomachi, Furukawa-cho, Hida City, Gifu Prefecture, where six buildings dating between 1804 and 1934 were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2004 and 2005. They belong to Watanabe Sake Brewery (渡辺酒造店), maker of the Hourai (蓬莱) label; the company writes the family name with the everyday character 辺, while the registrations use the older form 邉.

According to the brewery, the family business began in 1732, when the first Kyūemon opened a shop under the trading name Arakiya. Later heads of the house ran a money exchange and produced raw silk, which they sold in Kyoto, and that trade built the family fortune.

Brewing came in 1870, under the fifth head, Kyūemon Akira. The story goes that he could not forget a sake he had drunk on a silk-selling trip to Kyoto, so he set up a brewery at his own home. The name Hourai comes from the Noh chant Tsurukame, sung at celebrations, where it names a mythical land of immortals. The ninth generation runs the brewery today.

Six Registered Buildings

The six buildings of the Watanabe Family Residence were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in two rounds. The Storehouse Annex came first, on 17 February 2004, as No. 21-0052. The Main House, Pickle Storehouse, Upper Storehouse, Middle Storehouse and Sake Brewery followed on 10 November 2005 as Nos. 21-0061 through 21-0065. All six were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives these dates and sizes:

• Main House: late Edo period (1830 to 1867), moved here in 1904; 2-storey timber building, 239 square meters
• Middle Storehouse: 1804; 2-storey clay-walled storehouse, 53 square meters
• Pickle Storehouse: 1864; 2-storey clay-walled storehouse, 39 square meters
• Upper Storehouse: 1872; 2-storey clay-walled storehouse, 53 square meters
• Sake Brewery: 1881; 2-storey clay-walled storehouse, 133 square meters
• Storehouse Annex: 1934; 2-storey clay-walled building, 40 square meters

All six have sheet-metal roofs. Their dates are spread across roughly 130 years, so one lot holds storehouses older than the brewing business, a brewhouse built for it, and a guest pavilion added in the Showa era.

Layout of the Premises and the 1904 Fire

The Main House of the Watanabe Family Residence faces Ichinomachi, a street of merchant houses with projecting lattice fronts. The storehouses stand at the back of the lot along the Seto River, a narrow canal. The agency places the Sake Brewery at the north end of this riverside row and the Pickle Storehouse at the south end, with the Storehouse Annex between them facing the water; the Middle and Upper Storehouses belong to the same row.

The line of white clay-walled Dozo-zukuri storehouses along the Seto River is one of the defining views of Hida Furukawa, and the agency describes four of the Watanabe storehouses as part of the storehouse streetscape that gives Furukawa its character.

A great fire swept Furukawa in 1904. Hida City's tourism site says the brewery's buildings were rebuilt after it. The national database, for its part, dates the Main House to the late Edo period and records that it was moved to the site in 1904, which suggests an older townhouse was brought here in the year of the fire; we could not trace where it came from. The four riverside storehouses all carry construction dates earlier than the fire.

Visiting the Watanabe Family Residence

The Watanabe Family Residence is still a working brewery and a family home, so visitors cannot wander into the back of the lot or the living quarters.

The way inside is the brewery tour run by Watanabe Sake Brewery. According to the company, tours start at 10:30 a.m. every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (except major holiday periods) and last about an hour, with room for 10 people. The fee is 2,000 yen per adult aged 20 or over; under-20s join free if accompanied by a guardian. Bookings are taken by phone or email, and participants gather at the shop front 10 minutes before the start. The route can change with the brewing work, and the brewery does not say which of the six registered buildings it enters.

The shop opens every day; Hida City's tourism site gives its hours as 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. We found no official statement on photography, so ask the guide during a tour.

The exteriors can be seen from public streets: the Main House from Ichinomachi, and the storehouse row from the lane along the Seto River. The residence is about a 5-minute walk from Hida-Furukawa Station on the JR Takayama Line. The brewery has no parking and directs drivers to the free car park at Hida City Hall, about 5 minutes away on foot.