Saijo Tsuru Brewery Tsunoya

A Third Floor Rising Behind the Shop

The Saijo Tsuru Brewery Tsunoya (西條鶴醸造角屋, Saijōtsuru Jōzō Tsunoya) is a wooden building of two storeys with a partial third storey, dating from the Taisho period (1912 to 1926), at Saijo Tsuru Brewery in Saijo Honmachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 1, 2016. It has a slate roof, a building area of 85 square meters and a well inside.

A note on the name: the Agency for Cultural Affairs reads 角屋 as Tsunoya, not Kadoya, the more common reading of the same characters.

The Saijo Tsuru Brewery Tsunoya is built against the back of the late-Meiji Store and Main House. Of the four listed buildings on the lot it has the smallest footprint, yet it is the only one that climbs to a third floor.

The Design Highlight of the Site

It was registered as number 34-0199 under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency's description calls the Tsunoya the design highlight of the whole site.

Three features earn it that description: a lookout-tower third floor at the south end, interiors finished in a Western style, and a roof clad in slate. The Store and Main House is roofed in tile and the two Shuhogura storehouses in red tile, so the slate of the Saijo Tsuru Brewery Tsunoya already sets it apart before you notice anything else.

The ground floor is mostly Doma, earthen-floored working space, with living rooms above on the second floor. The small third floor, a belvedere perched at the south corner, sits on top of that.

The Tenpo Well

Inside the Saijo Tsuru Brewery Tsunoya is a well known as the Tenpo Isui, the Tenpo well. The brewery says the well is said to have been dug in the Tenpo era of the Edo period (1830 to 1844), and that it uses its water in every stage of brewing. So while the building is Taisho, the well is by tradition much older.

The brewery explains that Saijo's brewing water begins as rain and snow on Mount Ryuo to the north, which seeps underground for many years before rising in the brewery district as moderately hard water. Hiroshima is better known for soft water, and this is the water Saijo Tsuru sake is made with.

The city's tourism site describes the brewery building as a three-storey wooden structure with black lattices built in the late Meiji period. In the Agency's records the building with a third floor is the Tsunoya, and it is dated to the Taisho period. This article follows the Agency.

Visiting

The Saijo Tsuru Brewery Tsunoya belongs to a working brewery, and no opening of the lookout floor, the Western-style rooms or the Tenpo well has been announced. From outside, the thing to look for is the third floor rising beyond the roof of the Store and Main House.

At the brewery shop you can taste sake brewed with Tenpo well water. Directions and the conditions for the shop and the brewery tour are gathered on the Saijo Tsuru Brewery page.