Kobayashi Sake Brewery No.2

A Brick Warehouse at the Eastern End of the Kobayashi Sake Brewery Row

Walk along the northern edge of the Kobayashi Brewery grounds in Kuriyama, Hokkaido, and you reach a long line of storehouses running shoulder to shoulder. The one standing at the eastern end is the Second Warehouse, or Niban-gura. It is a two-story brick building completed in 1921 (Taisho 10), with a floor area of 382 square meters that makes it the most generously sized of the brick warehouses in the row.

The structure runs north to south, about 38 meters along the ridge and roughly 10 meters across. A gabled roof clad in sheet iron covers it. Inside, fourteen pillars stand in two rows down the length of the ground floor, and a single entrance opens on the south side. Windows appear only on the upper floor, which gives the lower walls an unbroken, fortress-like solidity that is typical of a working sake cellar, where steady temperature mattered more than daylight.

Kobayashi Brewery itself dates to 1878 (Meiji 11), when it began as a sake maker in Sapporo. The business moved to this spot in Kuriyama in 1901, drawn by the abundant water of the Yubari River. Its label, Kita no Nishiki, carries the ambition of the founder, Kobayashi Yonezaburo, to win renown in the north of Japan.

Why This Building Is a Registered Cultural Property

On October 18, 2006, the Second Warehouse was entered into the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties as part of a group of buildings on the brewery site. It is worth pausing on the word register. In Japan, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property is different from a Designated one such as a National Treasure or Important Cultural Property. Registration is a lighter form of protection aimed at buildings, usually at least half a century old, that help shape the historic character of the wider landscape. The criterion applied here was exactly that: the structure contributes to the historic scenery of the country.

The value lies less in any single rare feature and more in the way the warehouse belongs to a surviving ensemble. Of the roughly eighteen storehouses scattered across the one-hectare site, thirteen earned registration on the same day in 2006. Together they preserve the look and working layout of a sake brewery built up across the late Meiji and Taisho eras, a period when Hokkaido was still being settled and its coal towns created strong demand for drink.

Among the brick warehouses, the Second stands out for its detailing. The gable-end windows, the row of small toothlike blocks known as dentils beneath the eaves, and the ornamental ridge-end tiles called onigawara give it a designed quality that goes beyond pure utility.

What to Look For When You Visit

Approach from the south first, where the entrance sits, and let your eye travel up to the gable. The dentil course and the decorative brickwork are easiest to read in raking afternoon light, when the shallow relief throws small shadows. Step back far enough to take in the whole row, and the Second Warehouse reads as the anchor at the eastern end, slightly broader than its neighbors.

The grounds are open and the exteriors can be admired freely. Inside the same complex, the former head office of 1944, now the Kita no Nishiki Memorial Hall, displays around five thousand brewing tools and vessels, and offers a shop and tasting counter. Interior tours of the cellars are arranged for groups of ten or more by advance reservation. Once a year, on the second weekend of April, the brewery festival opens spaces that are otherwise closed, and the warehouses fill with visitors come to taste the new season's sake.