Iida Family Residence Yeast Starter Storehouse

What the Yeast Starter Storehouse Is

The Iida Family Residence Yeast Starter Storehouse (飯田家住宅酛蔵, Iida-ke Jūtaku Motogura) is a 2-storey timber brewery building of 1914 in Toyoshina Takibe, Azumino City, Nagano Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2005. A motogura is where brewers prepared moto, the yeast starter that begins every batch of sake.

It occupies the northwest corner of the lot as a long north-south block, 10 bays by 5 bays with a building area of 190 square meters. Brewing storehouse 1 is joined to its east side. The registration number is 20-0241.

Moto, also called shubo or sake mother, is a small, dense mash of steamed rice, koji and water in which yeast is grown to strength before the main fermentation. Of the 13 registered items on the estate, this is the only one dated to the Taisho era (1912 to 1926).

Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs credits the Iida Family Residence Yeast Starter Storehouse with shaping the view of the estate from the north. Together with brewing storehouse 1 extending east from it, it forms a continuous white-walled front along the north edge of the property.

The estate also lets you trace sake production through its building names: yeast starter, brewing, rice storage, and a shed originally used for polishing rice. The motogura is where fermentation began.

What to Look For

The northern 3.5 bays were a koji-muro, the warm, humid room where koji mould was grown on steamed rice. Koji is essential to making moto, so both steps happened under one roof at this end of the building.

The roof is carried on Western-style trusses. A truss triangulates its timbers to carry the load, which suits a clear span of 5 bays without interior posts. Built in the Taisho era, the Iida Family Residence Yeast Starter Storehouse adopted this newer framing rather than the traditional wagoya roof structure.

The walls are of the okabe type, with the posts buried inside a skin of white plaster. The roof is a tiled Kirizuma-zukuri gable, with a tiled pent roof along the southern half of the east side.

Viewing the Yeast Starter Storehouse

The Iida Family Residence Yeast Starter Storehouse is inside a private residence and the interior is not open.

As the Agency's description suggests, the building is seen from the north side of the estate, where its long plastered wall and that of the neighbouring brewing hall mark the boundary. Keep photography to exteriors visible from public roads.

Directions and visiting etiquette are covered on the Iida Family Residence page.