Homei Sake Brewery

Homei Sake Brewery and Its Nine Registered Buildings

Homei Sake Brewery (鳳鳴酒造, Hōmei Shuzō) is a sake brewery founded in 1797 in Gofukumachi, Tamba-Sasayama City, Hyogo Prefecture, whose nine buildings, dating from the late Edo period to the end of the Meiji era, were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on September 19, 2003. The nine entries carry the consecutive numbers 28-0127 to 28-0135, and every one of them is listed under the Homei Sake Brewery name.

The site lies northeast of the ruins of Sasayama Castle, in Gofukumachi, a street of shops in the old castle town. The main house fronts the street on the north side of the lot. Behind it, storehouses, the kettle room, the brewing storehouse and the pressing house run back one after another to a second road at the southern edge. From the street the Homei Sake Brewery looks like a single merchant house, but the deep, narrow lot holds the whole sequence of traditional sake making.

No sake is brewed in Gofukumachi now. Homei moved production to its Ajimagura brewery near JR Sasayamaguchi Station, and the old buildings are open as a free brewery museum called Horoyoi Jokagura, with the company's shop in the main house.

The Nine Buildings from Street to Rear

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes each building by its position relative to the others, so the descriptions can be pieced together into a plan of the Homei Sake Brewery, reading from north to south.

• Main House (1804): a two-storey townhouse with a low attic floor (Tsushi-nikai), its long side facing the street, and the shop inside
• Office No. 1 (early Meiji): a tiny one-room building just west of the main house
• Storehouse No. 1 (late Edo): in the northwest corner, completing the street frontage with the main house and Office No. 1
• Annex (mid-Meiji): the family's residential wing behind Storehouse No. 1, joined to the main house on the east
• Storehouse No. 2 (late Edo): a two-storey storehouse on the east side, behind the main house
• Kettle Room and Rice-Washing Room (late Edo): south of Storehouse No. 2, where rice was washed and steamed
• Brewing Storehouse (late Edo): the largest building, running east to west south of the kettle room
• Pressing House and Koji Room (late Edo): attached to the south of the brewing storehouse, with the koji room at its far end
• Office No. 2 (late Meiji): the brewery office southwest of the brewing storehouse, near the entrance from the southern road

Walking south through the lot follows the order of the work itself: washing and steaming the rice, fermenting it, then pressing the finished mash. Six of the buildings were registered as contributing to the historic landscape, and three, the Annex, Storehouse No. 2 and the Kettle Room and Rice-Washing Room, as models of architectural form. Each has its own page describing its construction and what to look for.

A Short History of the Homei Brewery

According to the company profile, the Homei Sake Brewery began in 1797 as the Nishio brewery. In 1945, thirteen local breweries in what is now Tamba-Sasayama City merged as Taki Shuzo, and in 1996 the business took its present name and became a joint-stock company. The main house that now serves as the museum's front door was the Nishio family's home.

Tamba-Sasayama City's tourism site records that sake was brewed in Gofukumachi until 1975, when all production was concentrated at Ajimagura. The idle storehouses were fitted out as the Horoyoi Jokagura museum in 2001, and two years later all nine buildings were registered together.

The brand name Homei, the company explains, comes from the Chinese phrase hōmei chōyō, the phoenix crying out to the rising sun, from a legend that the bird's single call at the first sunrise of the year drives away misfortune. In 2015 the Homei Sake Brewery, listed as the main house and eight other buildings, became one of the component properties of the Japan Heritage story built around Dekansho-bushi, Sasayama's best-known folk song. The Japan Heritage portal presents Homei as one of the breweries still making the sake that the song tells its listeners to drink.

Two Accounts of When the Homei Buildings Were Built

The Homei Sake Brewery's own website and the city's tourism site both say the storehouses and the house were built when the business was founded in 1797. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives a different picture: the main house is dated 1804, five buildings (Storehouses No. 1 and No. 2, the kettle room, the brewing storehouse and the pressing house) to the late Edo period, and the two offices and the Annex to the Meiji era.

This site follows the Agency's dates for each building. The main house is only seven years younger than the company, and the Agency's dating does not rule out that parts of the site go back to the founding, but none of the sources consulted supports dating all nine buildings to 1797.

Visiting the Homei Sake Brewery

Horoyoi Jokagura, the museum at the Homei Sake Brewery, is about 15 minutes by Wing Shinki bus from JR Sasayamaguchi Station on the Fukuchiyama Line; get off at Kasuga Jinja-mae. The Tamba-Sasayama City Historical Art Museum stands diagonally across the street and makes an easy landmark.

It is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and closed on Tuesdays and over the New Year holiday. Entry is free, and individuals and small groups can simply walk in; groups that book ahead are shown round by a member of staff (checked September 2026). The brewery occasionally closes at short notice, so check its announcements before setting out.

The route begins in the shop in the main house and passes through the rice store, the kettle room, the brewing storehouse, the pressing house and the koji room, then a panel display and the music-vibration equipment in the brewing storehouse, before returning to the shop, where nearly every Homei sake can be tasted. The Annex and both offices are not on the route and can be seen only from outside.