Fukubijin Sake Brewery

A Brewery Founded by a Town

Fukubijin Sake Brewery (福美人酒造, Fukubijin Shuzō) is a sake maker founded in 1917 with two compounds in Saijo Honmachi and Saijo Suehirocho, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and fourteen of its buildings and structures were entered on Japan's register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 1 August 2016.

Most sake breweries in Saijo grew out of a single family business. Fukubijin did not. It was incorporated on 25 May 1917 as a joint-stock company, funded by brewers from across western Japan who pooled their capital to build a new brewery. According to Higashihiroshima City, the driving force was Yoshii Tsuneo, then mayor of Saijo, who wanted a large company brewery to strengthen the town's industry and its finances. The firm began as Saijo Shuzo and later took the name of its sake.

The timing mattered. In the Taisho years Saijo's brewers were collecting top marks at national sake competitions, and the town was building a reputation as one of Japan's great brewing centres.

Fukubijin earned a place in that story through skill rather than age. It was designated a training institution for brewing technicians, and so many master brewers, or toji, learned their trade here that locals nicknamed it the Saijo Sake Brewing School.

The name carries local history. Fuku comes from Fukujin, the old name of the district; bijin, a beautiful woman, describes the soft, rounded sake the founders were after. Brewing water still comes from a well on the site known as Bijin no Ido.

Two Compounds: Ebisu-gura and Daikoku-gura

The Fukubijin buildings sit on two plots separated by a street. The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the Ebisu-gura compound at 691 Saijo Honmachi and the Daikoku-gura compound at 28-1 Saijo Suehirocho. The company and local tourism material sometimes write the names with a different character for gura, and the company's postal address is 6-21 Saijo Honmachi.

Ebisu-gura (Saijo Honmachi)

Ebisu-gura is what the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls the central compound of the brewery. Stone gateposts mark the middle of its south side. Just inside and to the west stands a Western-style office, with the bottling plant beyond it. A brick chimney rises from the centre of the yard, and north of it the No. 1 Storehouse runs east to west for about 47 metres.

Behind that storehouse, along the northern edge, stand the Rear Storehouse and the Showa-gura, while the long white wall of the No. 2 Storehouse closes off the east side. To the west, two dark-boarded dormitories, the Fukujin Dormitory and the Employee Dormitory, run in a line. Ten of the fourteen registered structures are here.

Daikoku-gura (Saijo Suehirocho)

Daikoku-gura was built on farmland behind the old townscape specifically to raise output. Higashihiroshima City describes it as the only brewery in Saijo sized to produce two thousand koku of sake in a single winter, double the usual capacity.

The No. 3 Storehouse runs 58 metres through the middle of the site, with a 27-metre brick chimney just to its south. On the east side, the No. 4 Storehouse stands in north and south buildings. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the No. 3 Storehouse to around 1924, and city records give 1937 for the No. 4 Storehouse. Four registered structures stand here, and most of Fukubijin's brewing now takes place on this site.

Registration and Municipal Protection

All fourteen structures were registered on 1 August 2016 as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, under the criterion for buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. They carry consecutive registration numbers from 34-0164 to 34-0177.

The set includes seven brewing storehouses (the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 Storehouses, both buildings of the No. 4 Storehouse, the Rear Storehouse and the Showa-gura), two brick chimneys, four support buildings (the office, the bottling plant and the two dormitories) and a pair of stone gateposts. What makes the listing unusual is its completeness: not just the brewing halls, but the rooms where the paperwork was done, the bottles were filled and the seasonal brewers slept.

On 21 February 2024, Higashihiroshima City designated Daikoku-gura as part of the Saijo Sake Brewery Group, a municipal cultural property covering four brewing sites in Saijo. The city presents the group as a record of how Saijo brewing grew from small post-town cellars to large purpose-built breweries, with Daikoku-gura as the end point of that development.

Visiting and Getting There

Only the Ebisu-gura compound is open to visitors. The company describes it as open for viewing at all times during business hours, but it does not accept visitors at Daikoku-gura, which the city also lists as closed to the public. The Daikoku-gura buildings can only be seen from outside the site.

Ebisu-gura has a shop where you can taste and buy sake. It opens from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays, weekends and holidays, closing for a break from noon to 1:00 p.m. Closing days are irregular and entry is free, so it is worth checking the company's notice of opening days before a long trip.

Alongside the bottles, the shop displays a cask from the barrel-donation drive that kept the Hiroshima Carp baseball club afloat in its early years, and calligraphy of the word kokushu, national liquor, brushed by successive prime ministers. Ask a member of staff before photographing the displays indoors.

Ebisu-gura is about 7 minutes' walk from JR Saijo Station on the Sanyo Line. By car, allow about 10 minutes from the Saijo interchange on the Sanyo Expressway, though the brewery has space for only 2 cars, so arriving on foot from the station is the practical choice.