Hakubotan Sake Brewery Enpogura South End Building

What Is the Hakubotan Sake Brewery Enpogura South End Building?

The Hakubotan Sake Brewery Enpogura South End Building (白牡丹酒造延宝蔵南端棟, Hakubotan Shuzō Enpōgura Nantantō) is an earthen-walled sake storehouse of the mid to late Edo period (1661 to 1830) in Saijo Honmachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 28, 2017. It is the oldest building at Enpogura, the compound that Hakubotan Sake Brewery treats as its founding site of 1675.

The building is 10 bays long and 3 bays deep, fully two storeys high, with a building area of 115 square meters. Its walls are Dozo-zukuri construction under a tiled roof, and it runs in a single line along the west side of the Enpogura lot. Inside, the ground floor is one open room and the upper floor is divided in two. Inclined rafters rising from the walls carry the roof. The building was altered in the mid-Showa years (1946 to 1965).

A copy of a Munafuda (ridge tag) dated 1675 survives in the South End Building, and tradition holds that this is the storehouse in which the Shima family first brewed. Higashihiroshima City dates the structure to the late 17th or early 18th century, and a town map of 1862 marks the spot as a brewing storehouse.

Why Enpogura South End Building Was Registered

The South End Building was registered because it contributes to the historic landscape of the country. It carries registration number 34-0234, the first of the eight Hakubotan structures listed that day.

The street front is what earned that listing. A stone base supports a dado of Namako-kabe, the lattice of flat tiles with raised plaster joints, and above it the wall is finished in white Shikkui lime plaster. Two courses of projecting drip tiles run the length of the wall, and the surface is pierced by many small windows. The eaves are plastered over as well, so no timber shows on the outside. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out this combination as the building's distinctive face.

Its position matters too. In Edo-period Yokkaichi, households licensed by the Hiroshima domain brewed in small storehouses set behind their houses on the highway, deep inside long, narrow plots. Enpogura South End Building stands at the head of that line of storehouses and shows, in physical form, where a post-town brewery was placed. On that basis Enpogura was also made a component of the Saijo Sake Breweries Historic Site on February 21, 2024.

What to Look For

The first thing you notice at Enpogura South End Building is the pair of drip-tile lines crossing the wall. They exist to throw rainwater clear of the plaster, but the two dark bands on white also break up a tall, two-storey face into horizontal layers.

Look lower and the materials change in sequence: stone, then tile lattice, then plaster. The joints of the namako-kabe are built up in plaster, so when the sun comes in at a low angle the grid stands out in relief.

Count the windows. Along a wall of 10 bays, about 18 meters, the openings are all small and there is no large window anywhere. Keeping openings small is the standard way to protect a storehouse from fire; multiplying them suggests the users needed more light and air than a plain storehouse would give.

The eaves are wrapped in plaster with no rafters exposed, even on the underside. Wall and eaves read as one mass, and from a little distance the whole building looks like a single white box.

Visiting Enpogura South End Building

Enpogura South End Building is not open to the public, and you cannot enter the grounds or see the interior. Hakubotan Sake Brewery keeps Enpogura closed as a rule because of the age of its buildings, and Higashihiroshima City lists Enpogura as a non-public component of the historic site.

The national database describes one side of the building as facing the street, and that street-side exterior is all a visitor can see. Please do not touch the walls or step onto the property. Keep photography to what you can take from the public road, and avoid getting in the way of anyone working at the brewery.

Opening hours of the head-office exhibition room and directions from Saijo Station are covered on the Hakubotan Sake Brewery group page.