Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery)

How the Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery) came together

The Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery), known in Japanese as 旧山田本店（ヤマカノ醸造） (Kyū-Yamada Honten), is a merchant compound in the Teraike Kokonokamachi district of Toyoma-machi, Tome City, Miyagi Prefecture, where five structures dating from the early Meiji era (1868 to 1882) to the early Showa era were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 4, 2021.

Yamada Honten, literally the Yamada main store, was the trading name of the senior line of the Yamada family, counted among the wealthiest merchants of the district from the Edo period until the mid-20th century. According to Kakutaya, a bedding shop that later took over a storehouse built by a branch of the family, the main line put money into modernising silk reeling in the Meiji era, into land reclamation meant to relieve tenant farmers, and into building a bridge (来神橋) over the Kitakami River.

Today the site is the head office and factory of Yamakano Brewery, a maker of miso and soy sauce that dates its founding to around 1909. The company history records that Suzuhiko Shoten, a pharmaceutical wholesaler, bought factories in 1955 and 1959 and spun off its brewing arm as Yamakano Brewery in September 1959. Suzuhiko Shoten is now Vital-Net, Inc., which the national database lists as owner of all five registered buildings.

Layout of the Yamada compound

The Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery) presents its public face to the shopping street along the east edge of the lot. Read together, the Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions place the buildings like this:

• On the street: the Shop Storehouse, a hipped-roof (Yosemune-zukuri) shopfront facing east; the Front Gate, a zelkova Munamon just to its south; and the small Document Storehouse, whose exterior echoes the Shop Storehouse
• Set back from the street: the North Storehouse of the late Meiji era and the South Storehouse of the early Meiji era, the oldest building on the lot. Both are gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) earthen storehouses with ridges running east to west
• At the far northwest corner: the Former Brewing Storehouse of the late Taisho era, registered separately under a different lot number and owned by Yamakano Brewery

Walking along the street, you meet the shopfront first, then the heavily carved gate, then the Document Storehouse with its copper-sheathed eaves. The two inner storehouses sit back from the frontage and did different work. From the South Storehouse to the gate and shopfront, the compound was built up over at least half a century.

The five registrations at the Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery)

All five buildings of the Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery) were entered on the national register on the same day, February 4, 2021, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

• Shop Storehouse: early Showa era, two-storey earthen storehouse, building area 76 m²
• Front Gate: early Showa era, timber, 2.3 m wide
• Document Storehouse: early Showa era, two-storey earthen storehouse, building area 20 m²
• North Storehouse: late Meiji era, two-storey earthen storehouse, building area 48 m²
• South Storehouse: early Meiji era, two-storey earthen storehouse, building area 25 m²

Two related storehouses were registered that day as well: the Former Brewing Storehouse at the back of this lot, and the Former Yamada Main Store (Kakutaya) Zashiki Storehouse in the Mikkamachi district. The latter was built in 1930 by Yamagun, a branch of the Yamada family, passed to Kakutaya in 1966, and still stands behind that shop.

Toyoma, Tome and brewing

The same characters, 登米, are read two ways. The city is Tome; the old town that holds the Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery) is Toyoma. Local accounts trace the split to the early Meiji years, when a prefectural office was set up here and officials from elsewhere read the name as Tome.

Toyoma was a castle town of the Toyoma Date family, a branch of the Sendai Date clan, who ruled its 21,000-koku domain for 13 generations over some 300 years. After the Meiji Restoration it prospered as a rice depot served by boats on the Kitakami River, and rice and soybeans supported many miso and soy sauce makers. The city promotion site says only two remain in town: Ebiki, founded in 1833, and Yamakano Brewery, which still works on the Yamada lot.

Getting to the Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery) and what you can see

By public transport, take the Higashi Nippon Kyuko Sendai to Toyoma highway bus from the Kencho Shiyakusho-mae stop or from Sendai Station (bay 32, in front of the former Sakuraya store), and get off at Toyoma Meijimura. The 10:00 a.m. departure from Kencho Shiyakusho-mae arrives at 11:35 a.m. There are three buses a day toward Toyoma, fares are cash only, and no booking is needed (checked September 2026). Do not board the same company's bus to Tome Shiyakusho-mae, which runs to the Hasama district instead.

Drivers should use Tome IC on the Sanriku Expressway. Yamakano Brewery says its car park is entered from the Route 38 side.

The Former Yamada Main Store (Yamakano Brewery) is a working head office and factory. None of the five buildings advertises interior access, so the Shop Storehouse, Front Gate and Document Storehouse are seen from the public street. For anything more, including the inner North and South Storehouses, contact Yamakano Brewery in advance (phone 0220-52-2511).