Oto Family Residence Kettle House

What the Kettle House Is

The Oto Family Residence Kettle House (大藤家住宅釜場, Ōtō-ke Jūtaku Kamaba) in Shiraichi, Takaya-cho, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, is a single-storey brewing workshop built around 1929 for a family of shochu and mirin makers, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 13, 2025. It is a timber building with a tiled roof and a building area of 93 square meters.

It stands northwest of the main house, in the part of the property once taken up by the brewery. Its address, lot 1058-2, is separate from the 1055 of the other buildings. Where the rest of the residence was for living in, this was where the family's product was actually made.

A Working Building on the Register

The Ōtō kettle house is register no. 34-0319, registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it keeps a semi-sunken kettle pit used in brewing, among other features, and that it conveys what the brewing trade was like.

Of the four registered Ōtō buildings, the main house and the annex were for family life and guests, and the storehouse held household goods. The Oto Family Residence Kettle House is the only one that shows the business itself.

Lees Room, Kettle Pit, Woodstore and a Western Truss

The building is a long single-storey block under a pantiled (Sangawara-buki) gable roof (Kirizuma-zukuri), entered on the long side (Hirairi), with its ridge running east to west. Toward the east end of the south side the wall is left out altogether, leaving that bay open to the air.

Inside, from the east end, come a room for cutting sake lees, the kettle area and a woodstore, all with earth floors. Lees, fire and fuel sit in a single row, a sequence that reads like the order of the work.

The kettle pit used for brewing was dug partly below floor level, and it is still there.

Look up and the roof is carried on an exposed King post truss, a Western framing system in which a central post is held by a triangle of timbers. It spans the earth floor without intermediate posts, which suits a building where work went on across open ground, and shows a local distilling family of the early Showa years adopting Western roof framing for its workshop.

Seeing the Kettle House

The interior of the Oto Family Residence Kettle House is not normally open. The kettle pit and the truss can be seen only when the building is opened for a local event.

If you do get inside, watch your step: the floors are bare earth and the kettle pit is sunken. Follow the organizers' guidance on photography.