Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Research Laboratory Building

A small laboratory in front of the No. 2 Brewhouse

Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Research Laboratory Building (賀茂鶴酒造研究室棟, Kamotsuru Shuzō Kenkyūshitsutō) is a single-story wooden building from the early Showa era (1926 to 1945) on the premises of Kamotsuru Sake Brewery in Saijo Honmachi, Higashihiroshima City, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 28, 2017. The brewery simply calls it the research building.

It stands east of the head office, in front of the No. 2 Brewhouse. At 9.3 meters by 3.6 meters, 34 square meters in all, it is the second-smallest of the 19 registered structures.

Two doorways under curved gables

The hipped (Yosemune-zukuri) roof is pantiled and the walls are clapboarded (Shitami-itabari). Inside are two rooms, east and west, each with its own doorway, and each doorway carries a small gable whose bargeboards bow gently upward, the curved form called mukuri.

Those paired gables let you read the two-room plan from outside. The clapboard walls match the neighboring head office, so the two buildings form a timber office corner in front of the white-walled brewhouse.

Why the Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Research Laboratory Building was registered

It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, the agency describing it as evidence of the modernization of sake making. Kamotsuru's own history traces a long interest in technique, from its powered rice polisher of 1898 to its role in founding a research station for Hiroshima brewing. We found no record of exactly what work was done inside the Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Research Laboratory Building, but a room for analysis set beside the office says much about brewing in the early Showa years.

Visiting the Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Research Laboratory Building

No interior access is announced for the Kamotsuru Sake Brewery Research Laboratory Building. It sits between the head office and the No. 2 Brewhouse and is seen from the path in front of the brewhouse, which is also where the Saijo Sake Festival brewhouse tours gather.