A Spinning Mill That Became a Miso Cellar
Marutakagura Kissawa-gura (丸高蔵吉沢蔵, also written Marutaka-gura Kissawa Storehouse) is a large two-story dozo storehouse at Takashima in Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture, built in the early Taisho era and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) on 28 October 2011.
It is the biggest of the three registered buildings on the site by a wide margin: 31 metres along the ridge, 10 metres across, 710 square metres of floor area. The roof is hipped, sheet-iron clad, and runs north to south. The entrance opens on the east face. The walls are finished in lime plaster with vertical boarding to waist height, lean-to roofs project at front and back, and a single-story wing attaches on the north side.
The brewery's own account is that the structure began life as a spinning mill at Kissawa in Yamanashi Prefecture and was brought here in 1915. Silk reeling and spinning were the industry of the Suwa basin in those years, so a mill building arriving from over the mountains to be filled with soybeans and rice koji has a certain symmetry to it. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the building as dozo construction, while the company describes the original mill as a timber structure; the two accounts are not necessarily at odds, since a dozo is a timber frame packed and rendered with earth, but the point is worth noting.
What Registration Recognises
The building carries registration number 20-0393 and was accepted under the criterion for structures contributing to the historic character of the national landscape. The official commentary calls it a large storehouse showing the bearing of a long-established brewing house.
Reading that phrase against the building itself is instructive. Scale is the argument. A 710 square metre storehouse was not built to hold a household's belongings; it was built to hold stock in commercial quantity, and its presence on a town street records a scale of business that most surviving Taisho buildings do not. Suwa had many brewers of sake, soy sauce and miso, and comparatively few of their working buildings came through the twentieth century intact.
Registration also protects the building's relationship with its neighbours. The shop stands to the north, the Kajikazawa storehouse to the south, and all three were registered in the same session in 2011. Kissawa-gura occupies the middle, the largest volume in the row, and its long flank sets the scale for everything around it.
Marutakagura itself was founded in 1916. The company traces its origin to an instruction from the nineteenth-generation head of the Miyasaka house, brewers of the Masumi sake, that a miso of genuine quality be made for ordinary households. The brewery is known as the birthplace of the Shinsyu-ichi miso brand.
Reading the Building from Outside
Look first at the roof. Kissawa-gura is hipped, with slopes falling on all four sides, while the storehouse immediately south of it is gabled. Two adjacent buildings of the same construction and the same decade, roofed on different principles. The hipped form sheds snow and rain more evenly and needs no gable wall, which for a building of this length matters.
Then the wall. Lime plaster above, vertical boards to waist height below. The boarding is not decoration. Plaster at ground level takes the worst of splashing rain and the knocks of loading work, and a timber skirt is cheaper to replace than a rendered surface is to repair. The same logic appears on the neighbouring storehouse, where the boards run considerably higher, and the difference between the two is one of the more rewarding things to notice here.
Those thick earthen walls also explain why the building still works. Miso aged by the natural method needs a cellar that moves slowly through the year, warming and cooling behind enough mass to blunt the daily swing. Suwa sits at altitude with sharp seasonal contrast, and a dozo built for storing thread turned out to be well suited to storing fermentation.
Practical notes. The buildings are private working property and not open to visitors. The shop that once operated in the building at the north end of the row closed on 22 February 2024, and there is no interior access to any of the three. The row is best seen from the road on the west side, roughly ten minutes on foot from JR Kamisuwa Station in the direction of Takashima Castle. Photography from the public road is unrestricted.
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Q&A
- Can visitors tour Marutakagura Kissawa-gura?
- No. It is an operating storehouse on private commercial premises with no public interior access. The exterior can be seen from the road.
- How large is Marutakagura Kissawa-gura?
- It measures about 31 metres along the ridge and 10 metres across, with a floor area of 710 square metres over two stories. That is nearly three times the floor area of either of the other two registered buildings on the site.
- What was Marutakagura Kissawa-gura before it came to Suwa?
- The brewery states that it was a spinning mill at Kissawa in Yamanashi Prefecture, dismantled and re-erected on this site in 1915 when the miso business was founded.
- How do I get to Marutakagura Kissawa-gura?
- The site is at Takashima 1-chome in Suwa City, about ten minutes on foot from JR Kamisuwa Station walking toward Takashima Castle, or fifteen minutes by car from the Suwa interchange of the Chuo Expressway.
- Is Marutakagura Kissawa-gura still used for making miso?
- The company describes the two storehouses as its natural-fermentation cellars, where miso matures slowly inside the thick earthen walls. Production areas are closed to visitors.
Basic Information
| Name | Marutakagura Kissawa-gura (丸高蔵吉沢蔵) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1-2952-1 Takashima, Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 20-0393 |
| Year Designated | Registered 28 October 2011 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 31 m along the ridge, 10 m across; floor area 710 sq m; two stories, dozo construction, sheet-iron hipped roof |
| Owner | Ajihyakumi Co., Ltd. (as recorded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public. Exterior viewing from the public road only. |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Marutakagura Kissawa-gura
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008996
- Cultural Heritage Online: Marutakagura Kissawa-gura
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/237586
- Marutakagura official website
- https://www.suwa-marutaka.jp/
- Shinsyu-ichi Miso: Marutakagura
- https://www.shinsyuichi.jp/marutakagura
- Shinsyu-ichi Miso: offices and affiliated companies
- https://www.shinsyuichi.jp/company/office
Last verified: 2026.08.05