Hashimoto Sake Brewery Rice-Steaming House and Polished Rice Storehouse

A Steel-and-Stone Brewing Hall of 1954

Hashimoto Sake Brewery Rice-Steaming House and Polished Rice Storehouse (橋本酒造釜場及び白米庫, Hashimoto Shuzō Kamaba oyobi Hakumaiko) is a brewing hall built in 1954 at a sake brewer's compound in Iburihashi-machi, Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 26 December 2005. It stands south of the refined sake storehouse with its ridge running east to west, and it is the newest of the twelve registered buildings.

The single-storey building measures 11 by 5 Ken bays, with a building area of 171 square metres, under a Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki tiles. It is the largest single-storey structure on the lot.

It was built as a shikomigura, the hall where steamed rice, koji and water are combined to start the fermenting mash. Its present name reflects later use as a rice-steaming room and a store for polished rice.

Why It Was Registered

The Hashimoto Sake Brewery Rice-Steaming House and Polished Rice Storehouse was registered as a model of form. Steel columns stand around the perimeter with tuff stacked outside them, and the roof is carried on steel Fink trusses.

A Fink truss is a triangular roof frame braced with diagonals in a W pattern, suited to spanning a wide space without interior posts. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls the building a good example of a structure from the transition toward reinforced concrete.

The stone skin is the same tuff used on the Edo and Taisho stores. The brewers matched the look of the older buildings while replacing the frame with steel, so tradition outside and modern engineering inside meet in a single building.

What to Look For

If you can go inside, look up. Steel trusses cross the 5-bay width in one span, and not a single timber post stands in the room. Compare the refined sake storehouse, whose ground floor has six posts, to see how brewing halls changed over roughly thirty years.

From outside, the long stone wall, 11 bays from end to end, is the feature. Judged by its exterior alone, few would guess the Hashimoto Sake Brewery Rice-Steaming House and Polished Rice Storehouse is post-war.

Visiting

The Hashimoto Sake Brewery Rice-Steaming House and Polished Rice Storehouse stands south of the refined sake storehouse, inside the grounds, and from the public road little more than part of its roof can be seen. The property is private and cannot be entered without the owner's permission.

Plans to open the compound as a private art museum have been reported, but whether this building will be open and whether photography is allowed could not be confirmed as of September 2026. Directions and general visiting conditions are on the Hashimoto Sake Brewery page.