A Merchant Front on the Hase Highway
Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House (木屋正酒造店舗兼主屋, Kiyashō Shuzō Tenpo-ken-Shuoku) is a timber townhouse of 1889 at Honmachi in Nabari City, Mie Prefecture, added to Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 29 March 2013. An extension followed in 1913 and a refurbishment in 1988.
It faces the Hase Kaidō, the old highway that carried pilgrims from Nara and Osaka east towards the Ise Shrines. The frontage runs 15.8 metres, which is wide for a merchant house and immediately marks the business as an established one. The main roof is a gable, kirizuma, laid with pantiles, and a lower secondary roof called a geya runs along the front at the height of the ground floor, throwing shade over the pavement and over anyone standing at the door.
The left-hand bay holds the entrance and the mise-no-ma, the shop room where customers were received and business was done. To the right, the floor level rises and the front of that raised section projects outward; its lower wall is clad in horizontal boarding held by grooved battens, a technique called sasarako shitami. Above, the wall turns to white plaster pierced by a mushiko-mado, a barred lattice window in plaster that ventilated the loft without offering a view in.
That loft is the building's defining feature. It is a tsushi-nikai, a low half-storey with a ceiling too shallow to stand up in, used for storage and, in the Edo period, a way of adding space without appearing to build above one's station. One point of caution for researchers: the Agency for Cultural Affairs record gives the structure field as single-storey while its own descriptive text calls the building tsushi-nikai. The two entries differ, and the descriptive text is the more detailed of the pair.
Registered for What It Does to the Street
Registered Tangible Cultural Properties are not the same thing as Important Cultural Properties or National Treasures. Designation, the older system, singles out buildings of the first rank and binds owners tightly in exchange for state repair funding. Registration, created in 1996, applies to buildings around fifty years old or more, asks owners to notify the authorities before significant exterior alterations, and otherwise leaves them to get on with it. There are three criteria for registration, and the one applied here is the third: contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.
The distinction is worth pausing on. Nothing about this house is unique. Merchant townhouses with plastered lofts, lattice windows and battened boarding were built in their thousands across central Japan. The value the Agency for Cultural Affairs recognised is not rarity but position. Stand on the Hase Kaidō and the frontages align, eaves lines run at a consistent height, and the street reads as a whole rather than as a row of separate buildings. Remove one long façade and the sequence breaks.
Nabari became a town on purpose. In 1636 Tōdō Takayoshi arrived from Imabari in Iyo Province, built his residence here and laid out the settlement in earnest. Traffic on the Hase Kaidō did the rest, and the town prospered as a post station on the route to Ise. A number of properties along the same street are registered, including the former Hosokawa house and other merchant frontages, so the brewery is one entry in a set rather than an isolated survival.
The House Behind Jikon
The Ōnishi family came to Nabari from Imabari in 1636 and traded in timber under the shop name Kiyashō, which is where the modern company name comes from. In 1818 Ōnishi Shōhachi took over an existing sake shop in Honmachi called Hoteiya and started brewing. The second-generation head organised the local brewers' association. For most of the next century and a half the labels on the bottles read Takasago and Taka-ichi Masamune, and the trade was local, within the Iga basin.
Then the sixth generation changed the picture. Ōnishi Tadayoshi trained at the National Research Institute of Brewing in 2002, spent two years under a Tajima master brewer, and took over as head and brewer in 2004. The sake he began making under his own hand was named Jikon, a Zen term meaning to live the present moment fully, without being held by past or future. Jikon became one of the most sought-after sake in Japan and now travels to Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore and France. The building where all of this is recorded on paper is the one on the street front.
This is the practical point for visitors. Kiyashow is a small working brewery and the building is also a private house. There is no ticket office, no set tour, no visitor centre. What you can do is stand on the Hase Kaidō and read the façade, which is the part that was registered. Above the entrance hangs the sugidama, a ball of cedar sprigs that brewers put up when new sake is pressed and that browns through the year as the sake matures. Check with the brewery directly if you want to ask about anything beyond exterior viewing, and please remember that people live and work behind that wall.
Nabari Station on the Kintetsu Osaka Line is the arrival point, roughly an hour from Osaka Uehonmachi by limited express, and the old town is a walk of about fifteen minutes. For interiors that are genuinely open, the Nabari Tōdō Family Residence a few minutes away shows how the town's founding family lived and admits visitors on payment of a small fee.
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Q&A
- Can visitors go inside the Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House?
- No. The building is a working brewery office and a private residence, with no regular public opening and no scheduled brewery tour. The registered feature is the street façade, which can be seen and photographed freely from the public road. Any request beyond that should go to the brewery directly.
- Where is the Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House, and how do I reach it?
- The address is 314-1 Honmachi, Nabari City, Mie Prefecture, on the old Hase Kaidō. Nabari Station on the Kintetsu Osaka Line is about fifteen minutes on foot, and the station is around an hour from Osaka Uehonmachi by limited express.
- Is the Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House where Jikon is made?
- This is the historic shop and residence of the brewery that produces Jikon, launched by the sixth-generation head after he became master brewer in 2004. The company also brews Takasago, its long-standing local label. The registered building is the front of the premises rather than the brewing halls behind it, and the company has added separate modern facilities elsewhere in the city.
- What does the "tsushi-nikai" of the Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House mean?
- A tsushi-nikai is a low loft above the ground floor, high enough for storage but not for standing. It is ventilated by a mushiko-mado, a lattice window formed in plaster, which you can see set into the white upper wall of this building. The form was standard in merchant houses along the highways of central Japan.
- Why was the Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House registered as a cultural property?
- Under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. Its 15.8-metre frontage, the low secondary roof over the pavement and the plastered upper wall hold the line of the old Hase Kaidō and help the street survive as a coherent post-town scene rather than as scattered old buildings.
Basic Information
| Name | Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House / 木屋正酒造店舗兼主屋 |
|---|---|
| Location | 314-1 Honmachi, Nabari City, Mie Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure); registration no. 24-0146; criterion: contributing to the historic landscape of the nation |
| Year Designated | Registered 29 March 2013 |
| Quantity | 1 unit (recorded as 1 ki in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database) |
| Dimensions | Timber construction, tiled roof, building area 250 m²; frontage 15.8 m; gabled pantile roof with front geya. Built 1889 (Meiji 22), extended 1913, refurbished 1988 |
| Owner | Kiyashow Shuzo (no owner recorded in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public. Working brewery and private residence; exterior viewing from the public road only |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00009494
- Cultural Heritage Online — Kiyashow Sake Brewery Shop and Main House
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/206377
- Kiyashow Shuzo official site — About the brewery
- https://kiyashow.com/about
- Nabari City — Cultural Properties and Cultural Facilities
- https://www.city.nabari.lg.jp/020/008/130/
Last verified: 2026.08.10