Miyagino Natto Factory Garage

Where the Delivery Vans Were Kept

The Miyagino Natto Factory Garage (宮城野納豆製造所車庫, Miyagino Nattō Seizōsho Shako) is a single-storey timber building from the early Showa period (1926 to 1945) at the Miyagino Natto Factory in Ichomachi, Miyagino-ku, Sendai, built to house the vans that delivered the finished natto, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on September 10, 2019.

It stands in the southwest corner of the site, facing east. It is a single-storey Kirizuma-zukuri building entered through the gable end (Tsumairi), with Shitami-itabari clapboard walls and a timber-truss roof. Inside is one mortar-floored Doma room with no wall or ceiling linings, so the structure is fully exposed.

The whole front is open and closes with a steel shutter. The building is timber-framed with a building area of 30 square metres.

Why It Was Registered

Registered as number 04-174 for its contribution to the historic landscape, the Miyagino Natto Factory Garage is noted by the Agency for Cultural Affairs for conveying how a food factory was organised in the early Showa years.

A factory's job is finished only when the goods go out. Soybeans enter the stone storehouse, become natto in the production and aging buildings, and leave from here by van. With the garage included, the seven registered buildings run from the start of the process to its end.

Sources differ on the roofing. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database lists the roof as iron sheet in its structure field but as sangawara pantiles in its description, and this has not been checked on site. The two sources also differ on position: the national database places it in the southwest corner, Sendai's Board of Education in the south corner.

What to Look For

The defining feature of the Miyagino Natto Factory Garage is the open front. The gable wall has been done away with across its full width so vehicles can drive in, and a steel shutter closes it. It is a plain, practical front for a building whose only job was to get deliveries out.

Inside there are no linings at all; the truss and posts are bare. It is a building for parking a van, with nothing added.

The corner position also seems deliberate. Goods waiting in the Aging Building's shipping area had to leave the site, and the garage appears to sit at the outgoing end of that route.

Visiting

The Miyagino Natto Factory Garage stands inside a working factory site that is walled and closed to the public.

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