Miyazaki Honten

Miyazaki Honten: A Kusu Brewer Founded in 1846

Miyazaki Honten (宮崎本店) is a sake and shochu works in Minamigomitsuka, Kusu-cho, Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture, run by a company founded in 1846; five of its early Showa-era buildings, an office and four storage buildings, were registered as national Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on December 20, 1996.

The company writes its own name with an older form of one character, 宮﨑本店, while the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the buildings under 宮崎本店. Both are read Miyazaki Honten. Drinkers in Tokyo know the firm best for Kikkomiya shochu, almost always called "Kinmiya"; its sake goes out under the Miyanoyuki name.

According to the company's own timeline, the founder, Miyazaki Shozaburo, started brewing here in Kusu in 1846. A profile by the brewers' association Jizake Kuramotokai says he began with kasutori shochu, distilled from sake lees, and mirin, and that the business moved to its present, larger site in 1900. The timeline adds that a continuous still was bought from Germany in 1930, and that the firm was incorporated in 1951, the year the Miyanoyuki brand appeared.

The Agency's notes place Miyazaki Honten among the long-established brewers of a district that has made drink from the underground water of the Suzuka River for generations.

Five Registered Buildings Inside a Working Plant

All five registered buildings at Miyazaki Honten stand inside a plant that still makes sake and shochu. Among rows of black-walled warehouses, the timber-framed, mortar-rendered office is the odd one out: the Agency calls it the only Western-style building on the works.

The Agency's entries also sketch the layout. Across from the office is the Storage House, two warehouses joined in an H, with a brown brick chimney facing the road to the north. Storage House Building A, its gable painted with the Kikkomiya trademark, has Warehouse No. 8 on its north side, and the long L-shaped Warehouse No. 4 is described as standing just east of a Storage House Building B.

The plant has kept changing around them. The company reports that a new sake brewing house was completed in June 2018, and the five early Showa buildings of Miyazaki Honten now share the site with equipment of that generation.

The 1996 Registration and the Lost Building B

Miyazaki Honten was part of the very first round of registrations under the Registered Tangible Cultural Property system: the buildings were registered on December 20, 1996, and the notice appeared in the official gazette on December 26. Yokkaichi City's heritage page gives the gazette date as the registration date.

The registration numbers run 24-0002 for the office, 24-0003 for Storage House Building A, 24-0005 for Warehouse No. 4, 24-0006 for Warehouse No. 8 and 24-0007 for the Storage House, and all five were registered for contributing to the historic landscape. Every one is a 2-storey timber building with a tiled roof. Warehouse No. 4 is by far the biggest at 655 square metres of building area, followed by the Storage House at 480, Building A at 278, Warehouse No. 8 at 105 and the office at 66. The Agency dates them all simply to the early Showa period and gives no individual completion years.

One number, 24-0004, is missing from the run. A Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building B was registered on the same day, and the Agency's list of registrations cancelled after demolition (as of December 5, 2019) puts it on the first line, cancelled on September 26, 2000. The company's own timeline likewise records six buildings registered in 1996, of which five remain on the register.

Visiting Miyazaki Honten

Miyazaki Honten is a working factory and its grounds are not open to the public. We could not find any notice of regular public tours on the company website (checked October 4, 2026), so contact the company before you go; its website gives telephone enquiry hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays.

Visits do happen on occasion. The local news site YOU Yokkaichi reported that a "Yokkaichi Tour" organised with the Yokkaichi Chamber of Commerce and Industry was held at Miyazaki Honten on January 26, 2024, with participants guided around the brewery and its production facilities.

The nearest station is Kusu on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line, about 9 minutes away on foot according to the company; by car, the company gives about 40 minutes from Yokkaichi Interchange. From outside the grounds you can see only what faces the street. Of the five buildings at Miyazaki Honten, the only one the Agency describes as facing a road is the Storage House, whose brick chimney stands on the northern road.