Matsumoto Sake Brewery Brick Chimney

An Eighteen-Metre Landmark in Brick

Matsumoto Sake Brewery Brick Chimney (松本酒造煉瓦煙突) is a brick smokestack in Yokooji Misu Daikokucho, Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, built in the late Meiji era (1898 to 1912) and listed as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 24 December 2013. It stands 18 metres tall, the highest of Matsumoto's registered structures, and was repaired in 2000.

Matsumoto did not build it. Kyoto City records that when the brewer set up in Fushimi it bought a former pharmaceutical factory and kept that plant's brick warehouse and this chimney as part of the brewery. Counting from its factory days, it has stood on this spot for more than 100 years.

Because it is not a building, the official count is one ki, the counter used for freestanding structures, rather than one to.

English Bond on an Octagon

The brick is laid in English bond: one course showing the long faces of the bricks, the next showing their ends, alternating all the way up. It was the standard bond for Meiji-era industrial construction in Japan.

At the base the chimney is octagonal in plan, 2.2 metres across. A decorative band wraps it partway up, breaking what would otherwise be a plain tube. Today steel angles and similar members brace it along its entire height, so a lattice of metal runs over the brick.

That bracing is what keeps it standing. It hides some of the brickwork, but it records a decision: that a Meiji chimney was worth the trouble of keeping up.

Why It Was Listed, and What to Look For

The chimney was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it shapes the historic riverside view together with the Daikokugura and the Brick Warehouse.

Kyoto City calls the storehouses and chimney seen along the river a symbol of the area. In a district of low tiled brewery roofs, one vertical brick shaft gives you a fixed point from some distance away.

If you can see it closely, look for three things: the octagonal base, the band at the waist, and between the steel braces, the alternating courses of English bond.

Seeing the Brick Chimney

The chimney stands inside the brewery grounds and cannot be approached. Matsumoto does not run tours and the premises are private.

Its height makes it easy to find from outside. From the levee on the western bank of the Shin-Takasegawa it rises toward the southern end of the Daikokugura, and the Brick Warehouse completes the picture. Photographs are taken from the levee or the public road.