The Building Where the Sake Was Actually Made
The Maeno Family Residence (Honke Monzenya) West Storehouse (前野家住宅（本家門前屋）西蔵, also transliterated Maeno-ke Jūtaku Nishigura) is a 1920 brewing warehouse in Yamasaki-chō, Shisō City, Hyōgo Prefecture, entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties (Buildings) on 15 August 2024.
Of the three Maeno buildings registered that day, this is the working one. The main house on Sakagura-dōri was where the family lived and sold; the small storehouse beside it held tools. The West Storehouse, set behind and to the south, was the shikomi-gura, the fermentation warehouse where rice, water and koji became sake. Its building area is 310 square metres, timber-framed, two storeys, tile-roofed.
It is also the youngest of the three by some eighty years. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to Taishō 9, that is 1920, with alterations in the middle Shōwa period. The main house and the tool storehouse belong to the last decades of the Edo era. A brewer does not put up a warehouse of this size unless the business needs one, and the date says something about how Honke Monzenya was doing in the years after the First World War.
How the Building Handled the Work
Sake brewing moves material vertically. Polished rice arrives at ground level, gets steamed, is carried up, cooled, inoculated with koji mould, then brought back down into tall fermentation vessels where it sits for weeks. A shikomi-gura has to make that circuit possible without a crane.
The solution here is written into the fabric. On the east face, towards its northern end, a timber ramp climbs the outside of the building to the second floor. Not a staircase. A ramp, wide enough for loaded carts and for men carrying rice on their backs. Inside, the upper floor is a single board-floored room with a hoisting hatch, the niageguchi, cut into the floor slightly south of centre, so that material can be dropped straight down to where it is needed rather than carried around the perimeter.
The ground floor was originally a single undivided space with an earth floor. Earth is not a shortcut. It buffers temperature swings and holds humidity in a way a boarded floor does not, and both matter enormously to a fermentation that runs through the coldest months of the year.
The roof is han-kirizuma, a half-gable, running on a north-south ridge with pantile covering, and the entrance is set in the south gable end. The Agency's summary emphasises the great span between the beams, which is the structural cost of keeping a brewing floor free of columns. Its closing phrase describes the building as a long storehouse that conveys the prosperity of the sake trade.
What Was Brewed Here, and What Happened to It
The Maeno family traded under the shop name Monzenya, and their label was Sanshō (三笑). Local records in Shisō place the household's start in brewing at around 1830, following a separation from Kita-Monzenya, the house that runs today as Oimatsu Shuzō. Newspaper reporting gives the label a run of roughly 150 years from the late Edo period. It ended in 1977, when the family left the sake business.
Sanshō disappeared for four decades. In 2018 the two breweries still working on the same street, Sanyōhai Shuzō and Oimatsu Shuzō, revived the name as part of a town-centre initiative, agreeing on shared conditions: Hyōgo Yumenishiki sake rice grown in Shisō, local water. Sanyōhai produces a kimoto junmai under the name, Oimatsu a junmai ginjō, and both are sold only inside the city. The annual release has been marked with a ceremony at Niwata Shrine in Ichinomiya-chō, the site the Harima no Kuni Fudoki associates with the earliest written account of sake brewed with mould, which is the basis for Shisō's claim to be a birthplace of sake.
So the liquid is being made again, a few hundred metres from the warehouse where it used to be made, by the descendants of the branch house the Maeno family split from. The West Storehouse now belongs to Honke Monzenya Ltd, which is the one property of the three with a corporate owner recorded in the national database.
Visiting Sakagura-dōri
The West Storehouse is not open to the public and has no visitor arrangement. Standing behind the main house on a separate lot at 50-11, it is glimpsed rather than viewed, and much of its bulk reads as roofline from the street. Anyone who wants to understand the Maeno property should start at the main house frontage and work south.
That frontage is accessible. Part of the ground floor of the Store and Main House runs as Machiya Café & Gallery Sanshō, with the adjoining space trading as the Honke Monzenya sake shop and stocking local Shisō sake. The Shisō tourism association lists the café at 11:00 to 15:00, last orders 14:00, closed Sundays and Mondays, with service ending when stock runs out; hours vary by season and the telephone number is 0790-62-0039. Photography of exteriors from the public road is unrestricted.
Shisō City has no railway station. Shinki Bus services connect the north exit of Himeji Station to Yamasaki Bus Center in about an hour, and Sakagura-dōri is roughly ten minutes on foot from there. Drivers leave the Chūgoku Expressway at Yamasaki IC and drive north for five to eight minutes, parking on Ōtemae-dōri at the Shisō Yamasaki visitor car park.
Both working breweries operate shops on the street and both sell Sanshō in season. The former Naka-Monzenya house nearby has become an inn. Autumn is the busiest time locally, when the maples on Saijōsan draw visitors from across the Kansai region.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Hyogo
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Maeno Family Residence (Honke Monzenya) West Storehouse
- [ Himeji Castle & Kobe Night View Cruise ]
Q&A
- Can you go inside the Maeno Family Residence (Honke Monzenya) West Storehouse?
- No. The West Storehouse is privately owned by Honke Monzenya Ltd and has no visitor access. The Store and Main House at the front of the same property does admit customers, as part of its ground floor operates as a café and sake shop.
- What was the Maeno Family Residence (Honke Monzenya) West Storehouse used for?
- It was the shikomi-gura, the fermentation warehouse of the family's sake brewery. The ground floor was one large earth-floored room, and a timber ramp on the east side carried material up to a second floor fitted with a hoisting hatch.
- When was the Maeno Family Residence West Storehouse built, and when was it registered?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to Taishō 9, or 1920, with alterations in the middle Shōwa period. It was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 15 August 2024 under registry number 28-0820, following a recommendation on 15 March that year.
- Can you still drink the sake once brewed at the Maeno Family's Honke Monzenya?
- The original brewery closed in 1977, but the Sanshō label was revived in 2018 by Sanyōhai Shuzō and Oimatsu Shuzō on the same street, using Hyōgo Yumenishiki rice grown in Shisō. It is sold only at shops and restaurants within Shisō City.
- How do you reach the Maeno Family Residence West Storehouse in Shisō City?
- Shisō City has no railway. Take a Shinki Bus from the north exit of Himeji Station to Yamasaki Bus Center, about an hour, then walk roughly ten minutes to Sakagura-dōri. By car it is five to eight minutes north of Yamasaki IC on the Chūgoku Expressway.
Basic Information
| Name | Maeno Family Residence (Honke Monzenya) West Storehouse |
|---|---|
| Location | 50-11 Nishishinmachi, Yamasaki, Yamasaki-chō, Shisō City, Hyōgo Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building), registry no. 28-0820, 107th registration round |
| Year Designated | Registered 15 August 2024 (recommended 15 March 2024) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber-framed, two storeys, tiled roof; building area 310 m². Built 1920, altered in the middle Shōwa period |
| Owner | Honke Monzenya Ltd |
| Public Access | No interior access; partially visible from the surrounding streets |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Maeno Family Residence (Honke Monzenya) West Storehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015066
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, Council for Cultural Affairs recommendation on registration of Tangible Cultural Properties (Buildings), 15 March 2024
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/pdf/94080301_03.pdf
- Shiso City: Why Shiso is called the home of fermentation
- https://www.city.shiso.lg.jp/kanko/hakkonohurusatoshiso/8142.html
- Hyogo Prefecture official tourism site HYOGO!Navi: Sakagura-dōri
- https://www.hyogo-tourism.jp/spot/result/1170
- Shiso Tourism Guide: Machiya Café & Gallery Sanshō
- https://shiso.or.jp/highlights/町家カフェ さんしょう
Last verified: 2026.08.26