Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Horaian Art Studio Building

A Nihonga painter's studio moved from Sendagi in Tokyo

Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Horaian Art Studio Building (賀茂鶴酒造蓬莱庵画室棟, Kamotsuru Shuzō Hōraian Gashitsutō) is a single-story wooden building from the early Showa era (1926 to 1945) at Horaian, the guest house of Kamotsuru Sake Brewery in Saijo Honmachi, Higashihiroshima City. It was moved here from Tokyo in 2005 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 28, 2017.

The building was the studio of the Nihonga painter Kodama Kibo at his home in Sendagi, Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. According to the brewery, the Kodama family and the family of a later Kamotsuru chairman were joined by marriage. After the painter's death the company acquired the tea room from his former house and opened the Horaian guest house in 2002; two years later it began moving the studio, the heart of the old house, and completed the work in 2005.

Fifteen mats, twelve mats and a deep alcove

The Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Horaian Art Studio Building covers 93 square meters. A 15-mat main room lies at the north end, a 12-mat anteroom to its south, and a corridor along the south side leads to the entrance in the southwest corner. Open verandas run along the north and west sides facing the garden.

The Tokonoma alcove is unusually deep, floored with three tatami mats, and the writing alcove beside it is intricately composed. The agency calls it a refined building with strong modern elements and registered it as a model of design. The brewery credits the relocation to the Kyoto sukiya builders Yasui Moku Komuten, with the architect Katayama Kazutoshi supervising.

A relocated building in a brewery

The Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Horaian Art Studio Building is dated by the agency as early Showa, relocated 2005; the fabric is the studio Kodama used in Tokyo. Of Kamotsuru's 19 listings it is the only one with no connection to brewing, a painter's workplace preserved inside a sake company's grounds.

Visiting the Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Horaian Art Studio Building

Horaian is a guest house for the company's clients and is not open to the public, though the brewery says it will consider requests to use it for tea gatherings; a tea ceremony school held an anniversary gathering there in 2016. The Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Horaian Art Studio Building stands within the grounds, so do not expect to see it from the street.