Kobayashi Sake Brewery No. 3

The Third Warehouse and the Logic of a King-Post Truss

Stand in front of the Third Warehouse, or Sanban-gura, at the Kobayashi Brewery in Kuriyama, Hokkaido, and at first glance it looks like a near-twin of the Second Warehouse beside it. Both are two-story brick buildings from 1921 (Taisho 10), both run north to south under a sheet-iron gabled roof, and both share the same general proportions. The Third, at 312 square meters, is the slightly slimmer of the pair, measuring about 38 meters along the ridge and roughly eight meters across.

The differences reward a closer look. The roof of the Third Warehouse is carried on a king-post truss, a triangular timber frame with a central vertical post that lets the structure span the width without interior columns. The second floor is built higher than its neighbor's, giving the upper level more usable volume. And on the gable ends, windows open on the ground floor as well as above, which lightens the lower wall in a way the Second Warehouse avoids.

The brewery behind these buildings, Kobayashi, was founded in Sapporo in 1878 (Meiji 11) and relocated to Kuriyama in 1901 for the water of the Yubari River. Its sake carries the name Kita no Nishiki, chosen by the founder Kobayashi Yonezaburo to express the hope of earning honor in the north.

Why This Building Is a Registered Cultural Property

The Third Warehouse was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property on October 18, 2006. The term registration matters here. Unlike a designation such as National Treasure or Important Cultural Property, which singles out the most significant works, registration is a gentler protection for buildings around half a century or older that lend character to their surroundings. The standard met in this case was that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country.

Its significance comes from belonging to a coherent group. Thirteen of the roughly eighteen storehouses on the grounds were registered together that day. Read as a set, they map out how a sake brewery grew through the late Meiji and Taisho periods, when Hokkaido's settlement and its booming coal towns fed a thirst for locally brewed drink.

Built the same year as the Second Warehouse and to a similar template, the Third shows how the brewery refined a working model rather than reinventing it each time. The taller upper floor and the exposed king-post truss are quiet evidence of a builder thinking about how the space would actually be used.

What to Look For When You Visit

Compare the two eastern warehouses side by side. The Third sits immediately west of the Second, and the family resemblance makes the small departures easier to spot: the extra height of the second floor, the ground-floor gable windows, the cleaner roofline that follows from the truss inside. If a guided tour gives you the chance to look up at the rafters, the king-post frame is the thing to find.

Exteriors across the brewery grounds are open to view. The 1944 former office, now the Kita no Nishiki Memorial Hall, holds a collection of around five thousand brewing implements and runs a shop and tasting counter. Cellar interiors are shown to groups of ten or more by reservation, and the April brewery festival each year opens up the buildings for everyone who comes for the new sake.