Miyagino Natto Factory Stone Storehouse and Bean Shed

Stone for the Beans, Timber for the Scales

The Miyagino Natto Factory Stone Storehouse and Bean Shed (宮城野納豆製造所石蔵及び豆小屋, Miyagino Nattō Seizōsho Ishigura oyobi Mamegoya) is an ancillary building of about 1934 at the Miyagino Natto Factory in Ichomachi, Miyagino-ku, Sendai, combining a storehouse of Akiu stone with a timber shed, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on September 10, 2019.

It stands west of the production building's west wing and faces south. At the front is the single-storey stone storehouse, a Kirizuma-zukuri building entered through its gable end (Tsumairi), where raw soybeans are kept. Attached behind it is the wooden bean shed, where the beans are weighed.

The building is part stone, part timber, single-storey with a metal-sheet roof, and has a building area of 60 square metres. It was renovated in 2011 and again in 2017.

Why It Was Registered

Registered as number 04-170 for its contribution to the historic landscape, the Miyagino Natto Factory Stone Storehouse and Bean Shed is described by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as an ancillary facility of a modern food factory that natto production could not do without.

Good natto starts with good beans. A fire-resistant stone store keeps them safe from damp and swings in temperature, and the scales are right behind it. The first two steps of the process sit together under one registration, a small lesson in how the plant was laid out.

The storehouse walls are of Akiu stone, quarried in the Akiu district on Sendai's western edge, left exposed rather than plastered over. The local stone appears in many older storehouses around the city, and here it was put to work for a food factory.

What to Look For

The contrast is not just stone against wood. The storehouse roof rests on a timber truss, a Western-style triangulated frame that spans a wide interior without posts. The bean shed uses Wagoya, the traditional Japanese roof frame of short posts standing on beams.

Storage wants an open, post-free room; a weighing shed does not. The two framing systems sit side by side in the Miyagino Natto Factory Stone Storehouse and Bean Shed because each suited its job.

The storehouse presents its gable end to the front, neat and symmetrical. Compare the mortar lines of the stonework with the horizontal shadows of the bean shed's Shitami-itabari clapboard and the two halves hardly look like parts of one building.

Visiting

The building belongs to a working factory. Its interior is not open, and the walled site cannot be entered.

No notice on photography was found. Directions and contact details for enquiries are on the Miyagino Natto Factory page.