Yamada Family (formerly Genji Masamune Sake Brewery) Minami

The White-Walled Storehouse by the Road

East of the long gatehouse at the Yamada estate stands the south storehouse, turning its gabled south end toward the road that runs around the compound. Where the north storehouse beside it is a timber building, this one is a dozō: a plaster-walled storehouse, its upper walls finished in white lime, built for the thick, fire-resistant enclosure that aged sake required.

The building sits on a north–south ridge under a simple gabled roof of pantiles, entered from its long eaves side. On the west a lean-to roof is added, forming a sheltered kuramae or storehouse forecourt. The south face is boarded across its lower wall and plastered white above; the east face is finished in weatherboard. These are the practical distinctions of a working dozō, each surface treated for its exposure.

Like the main house and the north storehouse, the south storehouse dates from the late Taishō period, roughly 1912 to 1925. It was a store for the family's Genji Masamune sake, and its interior has since been converted, like its neighbour, into a dining room for the udon restaurant that now occupies the estate.

Why Dozō Construction Matters

A dozō is built up in thick earthen walls finished with lime plaster, a technique developed to resist both fire and the swings of temperature and humidity. For a sake brewery this was not decoration but necessity: the storehouse had to hold a steady interior while the seasons turned outside. The white upper wall you see is the visible face of that heavy construction.

The contrast with the adjoining north storehouse is instructive. Placed side by side, the plastered dozō and the weatherboarded timber building show two different answers to the same task of storage, and reading them together is one of the pleasures of the site. The lean-to on the west, sheltering the forecourt, is the kind of everyday addition that a working brewery accumulated over its life.

Standing in the Group

The south storehouse was registered on 12 October 2001, together with the main house and the other estate buildings, as a structure contributing to the historic landscape. Presenting its gable to the outer road, it is one of the faces the compound turns to the world, and it helps anchor the group of brewery buildings that survive here as a set.

On a visit, look for the white-plastered gable from the road before you enter. Inside, the storehouse now holds diners, and moving between it, the north storehouse and the main house lets you feel the estate as the connected working place it once was.