Hashimoto Sake Brewery Tool Storehouse

A Late-Edo Store Linked to the Main House

Hashimoto Sake Brewery Tool Storehouse (橋本酒造道具蔵, Hashimoto Shuzō Dōgugura) is a late-Edo earthen-walled storehouse, built between 1830 and 1867, 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 west of the detached reception room and is connected to the main house by a corridor.

The plan is 5 and a half by 2 and a half Ken bays, long on the north-south axis. It is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri store with a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof of Sangawara-buki tiles, entered at the gable end in the Tsumairi manner, with a building area of 60 square metres. The door is on the south face, and the north face has a window on each floor.

As the name says, it held tools and utensils for brewing and household occasions. Its direct link to the main house suggests it stored things that went in and out regularly.

Why It Was Registered

The Hashimoto Sake Brewery Tool Storehouse was registered as difficult to reproduce. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out its walls: along the west and north faces and the northern part of the east face, the posts are set so close together that they touch.

A normal earthen storehouse has posts every half bay or bay, with clay infill between them. Here the timber itself forms the wall before the clay is applied. It is a lavish use of wood, and building it again today would cost far more in labour and material.

What to Look For

Note the contrast between the doorway in the south gable and the stacked windows on the north face: entry from one end, light and air from the other.

Directly south stands the stone storehouse of 1948. A late-Edo clay store and a post-war stone store, one behind the other, show how the brewers' choice of material shifted over a century.

Visiting

The Hashimoto Sake Brewery Tool Storehouse stands west of the detached reception room, 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.