A Tea Room at the Edge of the Estate
The Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery and Takeshige Family Residence Tea House (武重本家酒造及び武重家住宅茶室) is a Taisho-era (1912 to 1926) tea room in the estate of a working sake brewery on the old Nakasendō road in Motai, Saku City, Nagano Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 26 September 2000. It is a single-storey timber building under a tiled roof, covering just 22 square metres, and it stands near the south-western corner of the raised plot that holds the family's retirement quarters, the building the register calls the hanare.
Inside there is one room of four and a half tatami mats. The western wall doubles as the boundary fence of the plot, so the tea room is quite literally built into the edge of the property. From the road below, only its roof shows above the stone retaining wall.
The Takeshige family settled in Motai early in the Edo period and began brewing in 1868 under the twelfth head of the house, Takeshige Tokuzaemon. The estate faces the road with a shop and a gate house and runs back through a chain of fermentation cellars; the domestic buildings were added piece by piece between the late Edo period and the early Shōwa years. The tea room sits at the far, quiet end of that sequence, as far from the brewing floor as the estate allows.
Why It Is Listed
The register lists the tea room under the criterion of being not easily reproduced. A four-and-a-half-mat tea room is common enough; what is unusual is how this one is dressed. The roof is Irimoya-zukuri, hipped and gabled, covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles, with descending ridges far heavier than a building this size would normally carry. The gables and the undersides of the eaves are sealed in plaster in the manner of a storehouse.
The result is a tea room that reads from outside as a miniature corner turret. Plastered gables are a fire precaution borrowed from the Dozo-zukuri cellars along the road, and here that vocabulary has been carried all the way to the most private, least industrial building on the site.
The Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery and Takeshige Family Residence Tea House was registered in 2000 together with 29 other structures of the estate, from the shop and gate house on the road to the cellars and the household shrine at the back. It is one of the smallest of them and belongs to a group of three at the south-western corner: the retirement quarters, the stone wall that encloses their plot, and this tea room.
What to Look For
Look up at the stone wall from the old Nakasendō and you will see a tiled roof perched on the corner of the fence. The descending ridges at the four corners are thick for a room so small, and the white gable and plastered eaves glow beneath them. That mismatch of weight and scale is exactly what gives the building its turret-like presence.
Notice, too, that the fence and the tea room share a single plane. The wall of the fence simply rises higher and takes a roof. The window of the tea room must open toward the garden, but none of that is visible from the street; from outside it is a closed white box.
Within the estate, the tea room faces the south garden of the retirement quarters. Those quarters are reached from the main house by a stepped corridor that passes through the west storehouse, which places the tea room at the very end of the household's circulation, a room reserved for quiet.
Visiting and Getting There
The Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery and Takeshige Family Residence Tea House sits at the corner of the retirement quarters' plot, and what can be seen from the public road is its roof and plastered gable above the stone wall. Walk west along the old Nakasendō from the shop front to the angle where the stone wall begins and look up; the small hipped roof on the end of the fence is the tea room. The four-and-a-half-mat interior is not open to visitors.
Takeshige Honke is a working brewery and the Takeshige family's home. The buildings are not open to the public on a regular basis, and the only routine way into the compound is to call at the office and shop during business hours, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays. It closes on weekends, national holidays, the New Year period and the old-calendar Bon holiday in summer. Once a year, around the spring equinox (usually 20 or 21 March), the brewery holds an open day, when visitors can walk through the fermentation cellars and taste the sake. For the 2026 open day a chartered shuttle bus ran from Sakudaira Station. The brewery also arranges reservation-only tastings in a converted cellar, some of which include a short tour, so it is worth checking the official website before travelling.
The nearest station is Sakudaira on the Hokuriku Shinkansen. From there, a Chikuma Bus bound for Mochizuki and Ashida stops at Motai-iriguchi, about two minutes on foot from the brewery, but the service runs on weekdays only. At weekends, plan on a taxi or car: the drive is about 30 minutes and roughly 15 kilometres. From the Joshin-etsu Expressway, both the Saku and Yunomaru interchanges are about 30 minutes away by car. Photography from the public road is unrestricted; inside the compound, follow the staff's guidance during events.
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Q&A
- When was the Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery and Takeshige Family Residence Tea House built?
- It dates from the Taisho era (1912 to 1926). The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the period only, not a specific year.
- How big is the tea house?
- It is a single-storey timber building of 22 square metres containing one four-and-a-half-mat room. Its west wall is shared with the boundary fence of the retirement quarters.
- Can visitors go inside the tea house?
- No. The interior is private. Its tiled roof and white plastered gable can be seen from the old Nakasendō above the stone wall of the retirement quarters.
- Why was the tea house registered as a cultural property?
- It was registered on 26 September 2000 under the criterion of being not easily reproduced, for its hipped roof with heavy descending ridges and its plastered gables and eaves, which give it the look of a small corner turret.
- What is the building it belongs to?
- The tea house stands in the plot of the hanare, the family's Taisho-era retirement quarters, which connect to the main house through the west storehouse. The quarters and their stone wall were registered on the same day in 2000.
Basic Information
| Name | Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery and Takeshige Family Residence Tea House |
|---|---|
| Location | 2179 Higashimachi, Motai, Saku City, Nagano Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) |
| Year Designated | Registered 26 September 2000 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber, single storey, tiled roof, floor area 22 square metres |
| Owner | Not recorded in the ACA database (within the Takeshige family estate) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public (working brewery and private home); shop entry weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; interiors on the open day around the spring equinox |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: 武重本家酒造及び武重家住宅茶室
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00001794
- Saku City: Motai Ai-no-shuku (Nakasendo rest station)
- https://www.city.saku.nagano.jp/kanko/kanko/spot/nakasendo/motaiainoshuku/motaiainoshuku.html
- Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery, official website
- https://takeshige-honke.jp/
- Shinshu Tateshina Tourism Association: Takeshige Honke Sake Brewery
- https://shirakabakogen.jp/spot/takeshiga_honke_syuzo
Last verified: 2026.09.10