Miyazaki Honten Storage House

What Is the Miyazaki Honten Storage House?

The Miyazaki Honten Storage House (宮崎本店貯蔵庫, Miyazaki Honten Chozoko) is a 2-storey timber storage complex from the early Showa period at the Miyazaki Honten sake and shochu works in Minamigomitsuka, Kusu-cho, Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture; it was registered as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 20, 1996.

It stands opposite the Miyazaki Honten Office, covers a building area of 480 square metres under a tiled roof, and is the second largest of the five registered buildings after Warehouse No. 4.

Despite the similar names, it is a separate registration from Storage House Building A nearby; this is the only registered building at Miyazaki Honten called simply the Storage House, with no letter attached.

Why the Miyazaki Honten Storage House Was Registered

The Miyazaki Honten Storage House holds registration number 24-0007, the last of the Miyazaki Honten numbers, from the first round of the system, and it was listed for contributing to the historic landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs draws attention to its chimney. The works is dominated by black-walled storehouses, and the brown brick stack, in the Agency's view, breaks up that uniformity. It adds a vertical line and a second colour to a brewery landscape that would otherwise be almost all black.

An H-Shaped Plan and a Brick Chimney

The Miyazaki Honten Storage House is made of two parallel 2-storey warehouses joined in the middle to form an H. Seen from above, two long blocks are tied together by a cross wing. Every face has a Hisashi, a lean-to eave fixed below the main roof.

On the side facing the road to the north stands the brown brick chimney. A chimney usually marks a process that needs fire, but the Agency's note does not say what equipment this one served.

The Agency dates the building only to the early Showa period, and we could not confirm whether the two warehouses were linked when they were built or later.

Visiting the Miyazaki Honten Storage House

The Miyazaki Honten Storage House is inside a working factory and its interior is not open to the public. Its brick chimney, however, faces the road on the north side, as the Agency notes, so that part of the building can be checked from the street. If you stop to look, keep clear of the factory gates and traffic.

Contact Miyazaki Honten in advance if you want to enter the grounds or take photographs there. The works is about 9 minutes on foot from Kusu Station on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line.