Umegae Sake Brewery

A Sake Brewery Founded in 1787 on the Miyamura River

Umegae Sake Brewery (梅ヶ枝酒造, Umegae Shuzō) is a sake brewery in Jomacho, Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture, founded in 1787, and seven of its buildings were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 14, 2002. The compound sits on the right bank of the Miyamura River, close to the Hirado Ōkan, the old highway that ran toward the castle town of Hirado.

According to the brewery, it opened in the seventh year of the Tenmei era, when Tokugawa Ienari was the eleventh shogun, and the brand name Umegae ("plum branch") was granted by Ōmura Sumiyasu, then lord of the Ōmura domain. The company still makes both sake and shōchū, and it says its brewing water is drawn from about 300 meters underground.

Read as a set, the seven registered buildings trace the whole production line. There is a former rice-polishing mill, a brewing storehouse where the mash fermented, a small building wrapped around a brick muro, a warehouse fitted with a sake press, and a bottling plant that now handles shipping. Add a main house that served as office and family home, plus a detached residence facing the garden, and you have a working brewery town in miniature.

Seven Buildings, Late Edo to Taishō

The Umegae Sake Brewery buildings carry consecutive registration numbers, 42-0012 through 42-0018, and all seven were listed under the same criterion: structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. What earned them a place on the register is less any single facade than the way they hold together as a brewer's compound.

Only the main house has a firm date, 1860. The residence, the bottling plant, the former muro and the former brewing storehouse are late Edo buildings (1830s to 1867), and the last three were altered in the late Meiji period. The former north storehouse is a Meiji-era building that was moved to its present spot around 1960, and the storage warehouse is the lone Taishō-era (1912 to 1925) structure.

Construction varies building by building. The main house and residence are single-story timber buildings; the brewing storehouse is a one-story Dozo-zukuri earthen-walled structure; the bottling plant is a two-story dozo-zukuri building; the muro building mixes brick and timber; and the storage warehouse sets a two-story earthen-walled frame on brick. Five of the seven have plain gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roofs, the main house has a roof hipped at one end only, and the residence is half-hipped. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes most of them as roofed in Sangawara-buki pantiles.

Together the seven cover about 1,037 square meters of ground. The largest is the former brewing storehouse at 264 square meters; the smallest is the residence at 70. Edo timber, a building relocated in 1960 and Taishō brickwork all share one site, and it is that layering of two centuries of enlargement and rebuilding that the register protects.

Walking the Umegae Sake Brewery Compound

At Umegae Sake Brewery the long, east-west main house occupies roughly the center of the lot, and the other six buildings ring it. The entrance is at the east end of a lean-to along the main house's south side, and any visit starts there.

Head northeast and you reach the residence, whose verandas open onto a garden to the southeast. North of it stands the former north storehouse, which until around 1960 stood further west, north of the storage warehouse. Circle west and the storage warehouse sits beside the main house, with the former brewing storehouse, the biggest building on site, filling the southwest corner below it.

East of the brewing storehouse is the former muro, and east of that the two-story wing of the bottling plant; the plant's one-story wing faces the main house's south lean-to, which once held the boiler area. Along the southern edge the roofs of the brewing storehouse and the muro read as a single line, forming what the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls an alley-like passage typical of old breweries. Walk it back to the main house and you have completed the circuit.

Most of these buildings are still in daily production, so visitors should not expect to wander the back of the site freely. The reliable way to follow the sequence is a reserved brewery tour.

Visiting Umegae Sake Brewery: Tours and Access

The earthen-floored front of the main house is used for tastings and sales, open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. according to the brewery. During its open-house events, sales run only 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Brewery tours are offered year-round except January 1 to 3, in a morning slot (10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.) and an afternoon slot (1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.). Book by phone (+81-956-59-2311) at least three days ahead. The roughly 10-minute explanation of the brewing process is given to groups of 10 or more adults, and any party of 10 or more must reserve even if it does not want the talk. Admission is free, but since January 2026 the brewery has charged a fee to overseas (non-Japanese) groups. Tours may be refused during the Obon and New Year holidays or when work requires it.

An open-house event (kura-biraki) is usually held in autumn and again around February, with a free shuttle bus from JR Huis Ten Bosch Station on event days, according to the Sasebo tourism association. Dates change every year, so check before you travel.

By car, Umegae Sake Brewery is about 3 kilometers and 5 to 6 minutes from JR Huis Ten Bosch Station: follow National Route 205 toward Ōmura, turn left at the Nagahata traffic light, and continue about 500 meters; the brewery is on the left. There is parking in front of and behind the entrance, including space for coaches. Drivers cannot join alcohol tastings. On foot the station is a 3-kilometer walk, so a taxi is the practical choice for rail travelers. The brewery's guidance does not say whether photography is allowed; ask on arrival.