Kirei Sake Brewery Gatepost

A granite gateway beside the Western-style building

Kirei Sake Brewery Gatepost (亀齢酒造門柱, Kirei Shuzō Monchū) is a stone gateway in Saijo Honmachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, erected around 1955 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 1 August 2016. It opens at the middle of the south edge of Kirei's main plot, just east of the Western-style building, with a span of 5.4 metres and smaller side posts.

The main posts are granite, 82 centimetres square in section and 2.5 metres tall. A metal nameplate is set into the western post.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the gatepost was put up when the Western-style building next door was moved to its present spot by sliding it along in one piece.

Why it was listed: the brewery's front door

Kirei Sake Brewery Gatepost was registered as a contribution to the historical landscape of the nation. Its job is to announce the brewery to the street. The Agency singles out the way the finish of the stone and the treatment of the corners give the posts depth, creating a proper frontage.

It is one of the younger structures in the group. When the Taisho-era Western-style building was relocated around 1955, the entrance was rebuilt to go with it, so the two pieces that face the street were composed as a single front in the postwar years.

What to look for: rock-faced stone and shaped corners

The faces of the posts are finished rock-faced, a treatment called kobudashi: rather than dressing the granite smooth, the mason left it in rounded bumps, which catch the light in small shadows.

The corners are cut back in a profile the Agency compares to karato-men, a chamfer with small steps along its edges. Instead of a plain right angle, each corner of the 82-centimetre post gets a crisp shadowed line. The contrast between the rough faces and those clean corners is the thing to notice.

Don't miss the metal nameplate on the western post, the one piece of metal in an otherwise all-stone entrance.

Visiting

Kirei Sake Brewery Gatepost faces the sake street and can be seen freely from the public road. Beyond it lie the grounds of a working brewery.

The rock-faced texture reads best in morning or late-afternoon light, when the sun comes in at an angle. Stand on the far side of the street to take in the gatepost and the Western-style building to its west as one frontage. Keep photography to the street.