Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A

What Is the Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A?

The Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A (宮崎本店貯蔵庫Ａ棟, Miyazaki Honten Chozoko A-to) is a large 2-storey timber warehouse 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 has a tiled, gabled roof in the Kirizuma-zukuri form and a building area of 278 square metres, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a heavy, imposing structure.

Warehouse No. 8, also registered, stands against its north side. By floor area, Building A is the third largest of the five registered buildings at Miyazaki Honten, after Warehouse No. 4 and the Storage House.

Why Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A Was Registered

Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A holds registration number 24-0003 and was registered in the first round of the system, for contributing to the historic landscape.

What the Agency picks out is its cladding. Building A is finished differently from every other warehouse on the site, and the Agency reads this as evidence that it was the central building of the group. Here a difference in rank between storehouses shows up as a difference in wall finish, which is a useful clue when you look at the works as a whole.

The Kikkomiya Mark and the Two-Part Walls of Storage House Building A

The gable of Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A is painted with the Kikkomiya trademark. Kikko means tortoiseshell, and the mark is a hexagon of that shape framing the character 宮, miya, from the house name. It is also where the shochu brand Kikkomiya, the "Kinmiya" of Tokyo bars, gets its name, so the warehouse gable has long doubled as a company signboard.

The walls are finished in two parts. Below waist height the boards stand vertically and edge to edge, in what Japanese builders call hameita-bari; above that, horizontal boards overlap like clapboard in the Shitami-itabari manner. According to the Agency, the other warehouses do not share this treatment, and that extra care in a single building marks out the place Building A held.

The Agency dates Building A only to the early Showa period and gives no exact year of construction.

Visiting Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A

Miyazaki Honten Storage House Building A stands inside a working factory and is not open to the public. We could not confirm whether the painted gable can be seen from any public road. If you hope to visit or take photographs, contact Miyazaki Honten in advance.

The works is about 9 minutes on foot from Kusu Station on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line.