Furusawa Brewery No. 1

Furusawa Brewery No. 1 Storehouse: The Heart of a Miyazaki Distillery

On the southeastern corner of the Furusawa brewery grounds, in the fishing town of Ōdōtsu on Miyazaki's Nichinan coast, a long two-story building rises in earthen-walled construction. Local records place its building around 1892 (Meiji 25), the year Furusawa Teiichi started the distillery, with repair work carried out in 2003. Called the No. 1 Storehouse, or Ichigō-gura, this is where the shochu mash begins its long fermentation. Among the working halls on the site, it is the largest.

The brewery still occupies the same block a short walk from the sea, and the storehouse has never left service.

Why It Is Protected

Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the building as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 2, 2018, under the criterion of contributing to the country's historic landscape. The gabled roof runs north to south, and doorways open on the west and north faces. Pillars stand at intervals of one ken, roughly 1.8 meters, braced diagonally in a crossed pattern that stiffens the frame. Large-section beams carry the second floor, and a king-post truss holds up the roof. For a rural fermentation storehouse of its date, that carpentry is unusually deliberate, and it counted toward the building's recognition.

What to Look For

Furusawa is the only distillery in Miyazaki that still ferments inside thick earthen walls. The clay mass holds the interior temperature steady through the fierce southern summer, so the ceramic kame jars that hold the mash need no burial in the ground to stay cool. Visit during the sweet-potato season, from October into November, and the air inside carries the sour warmth of live fermentation.

The fifth-generation head brewer, Furusawa Masako, is one of the few women working as a tōji in Japan. She tends the mash in this storehouse much as her predecessors did, jar by jar, using a single-pass atmospheric still and no mechanical cooling.