Former Honma Sake Brewery Store and Main Building

A Merchant House on the Old Sado Highway

The Former Honma Sake Brewery Store and Main House (旧本間酒造店舗兼主屋, Kyū Honma Shuzō Tenpo-ken-Shuoku) is a 1923 townhouse in Sōja-machi, Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture, registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 February 2016.

It faces east onto the old road, and that orientation explains most of the building. The road is the former Sado Bugyō Kaidō, the route by which officials of the Sado magistracy travelled between Edo and the silver and gold mines of Sado Island, and the stretch here formed the post town of Sōja. A shop had to present itself to that traffic.

The roof is irimoya, hipped above and gabled below, and the house is tsumairi, entered from the gable end. Passers-by therefore see the triangle of the gable rather than the long flank, a face that reads as deliberate rather than incidental.

Inside, the ground floor follows the logic every working merchant house in Japan shares. The southernmost bay is a tōri-doma, an earth-floored passage running straight through the depth of the building so that goods, and the smell of the brewery behind, could pass without crossing the living rooms. More earth floor lies to the east, where the shop counter faced the street. To the west are the raised rooms, including a zashiki kept for receiving guests.

Upstairs, corridors wrap the east and south sides and the private rooms line up behind them. The detail that makes the elevation is the eaves treatment: the second-floor eaves are built in segai style, carried out on projecting bracket arms so they overhang deeply. The result is a band of shadow across the upper facade that changes through the day, and it is the reason the building still gives the street its character.

The registered unit is a single two-storey timber structure under tile, with a building area of 232 square metres.

Registered for the Street, Not Only for the House

Registration number 10-0325 was granted in the 83rd round of listings, on the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. That criterion is the key to why this building matters. Sōja lost most of its post-town frontage during the twentieth century, and the surviving Taisho-period merchant houses on the old road can be counted quickly.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry singles out the depth of the segai eaves as what gives the elevation expression, and describes the house as lending historic character to the streetscape of Sōja-shuku. Read carefully, that is an argument about the row rather than the object: the house is valued for what it does to the view along the road.

Behind it stands the brewhouse and kamaya, registered on the same day. The Honma family brewed on this site until 1969, then traded as a sake retailer until 2014, and the shop side of this building is where that business met its customers. The property was later donated to Maebashi City, which owns it today.

Visiting, and What Happens Here Now

This is the unusual part. The building did not become a museum. After the donation it sat empty, and neighbourhood residents, working under the Sōja-machi federation of residents' associations, asked to use it instead. Since 2018 it has operated as HONMAYA, a community shop named in roman letters so that visitors from abroad might feel invited in.

On opening days the doma fills with vegetables brought in by local farmers, along with baked goods and small items from nearby makers. The building has also hosted a curry kitchen, a children's study group and yoga classes. Tea is put out for anyone who stops by, and the large tatami room is open to sit in.

Opening is generally weekends, with some weekday openings, and the hours have shifted over the years, so check before travelling. HONMAYA posts its schedule on social media, and Maebashi City's Cultural Properties Protection Division (027-280-6511) can also help.

Photography of the exterior is unrestricted. Inside, ask first, as with any place that is somebody's working shop.

Getting here: Gunma-Sōja Station on the JR Jōetsu Line lies about twenty minutes away on foot to the west, buses from the north exit of Maebashi Station stop nearby, and the Maebashi interchange of the Kan-etsu Expressway is roughly ten minutes by car. There is parking on the site.

Stand across the road before you go in. The gable, the deep upper eaves and the long low shop front were designed to be read from exactly that distance by someone walking the highway, and that is the one view of the building that has not changed since 1923.

The Sōja Kofun group, the Sannō-haiji temple site and the Maebashi City Sōja Historical Museum are all within a short walk south, which makes a half-day route easy to plan.