Saijo Tsuru Brewery Shuhogura Chimney

A Square Brick Stack in the Middle of the Lot

The Saijo Tsuru Brewery Shuhogura Chimney (西條鶴醸造酒宝蔵煙突, Saijōtsuru Jōzō Shuhōgura Entotsu) is a brick chimney of the Taisho period (1912 to 1926) at Saijo Tsuru Brewery in Saijo Honmachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 1, 2016. It is square in plan, 1.7 meters on each side at the base and 19 meters tall.

Its name borrows that of the Shuhogura, the line of storehouses at the back of the lot. The chimney itself, though, does not stand among them. It rises near the middle of the site, just west of the Tsunoya annex.

Four of the five Saijo Tsuru Brewery listings are counted as buildings. The Shuhogura Chimney is the exception, registered as a structure and counted as one stack.

Connected to the Rice-Steaming Room

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, smoke from the kamaba, the room south of the brewing storehouse where sake rice is steamed, runs through a flue and leaves by this chimney. The Saijo Tsuru Brewery Shuhogura Chimney is therefore one half of a pair, with the steaming furnace as the other.

Seen on its own the stack looks isolated in the center of the lot. In the brewing process it is joined to the brewing storehouse: the system was built so that smoke from steaming rice at the back leaves at the top of this chimney.

Part of Saijo's Skyline of Chimneys

Its registration number is 34-0202, the last of the five, and the criterion is its contribution to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency's description sees the Saijo Tsuru Brewery Shuhogura Chimney as one of the stacks that give Saijo, a town crowded with breweries and still full of chimneys, its particular look.

Everything else on the lot is a two-storey townhouse or storehouse, so at 19 meters the chimney stands far above its neighbors. Against the flat spread of tiled roofs it adds a single vertical line of brick.

Because the stack is square, its corners are sharp and its sunny and shaded faces separate cleanly. In the low light of early morning or late afternoon the edges read most clearly.

Visiting

The Saijo Tsuru Brewery Shuhogura Chimney stands in the middle of a working brewery, and no access to its base has been announced. It is behind the Store and Main House and the Tsunoya, which face the street, so from outside you look up at its upper part over their roofs.

The brewery's Sakagura Monogatari tour walks through storehouses in daily use, and photography inside is fully permitted. The notice does not mention a stop at the foot of the chimney, so ask when you book if that matters to you. Directions and tour conditions are gathered on the Saijo Tsuru Brewery page.