Masujin Sake Shop

Masujin Sake Shop: a sake merchant's townhouse on Omachi Street, Murakami

Masujin Sake Shop (益甚酒店, Masujin Saketen) is a group of sake merchant's buildings in Omachi, Murakami City, Niigata Prefecture, centered on a main house built just after the great fire of 1892, whose store, main house and sake brewery, and storehouse were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 31, 2003. Locally the business usually goes by the shorter name Masujin.

The buildings line the street that formed the heart of the merchant quarter of the old Murakami castle town. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the store faces west onto this street, the main house runs back behind it, and the brewery continues further east. Trade at the front, living quarters in the middle and sake making at the back: the whole household was strung out along a single deep plot.

Masujin Sake Shop was once a working brewery. Today it is a specialist shop for Murakami's local sake, and tools from its brewing days are on display inside.

From a post-fire rebuilding to a local sake shop

The oldest building at Masujin Sake Shop is the main house. Its ridge tablet, the Munafuda fixed in the roof frame at completion, shows that it went up just after the great fire of 1892, and the storehouse is thought to date from about the same time. The Agency notes that in 1909 the head of the household, Masuda Jintarō, bought the main house together with a full set of brewing equipment and the storehouse.

The shop's owner has told a local web magazine how the business began. In his account, Masuda Jinjirō, from a branch of the family that runs the Masuda Jinbei sake shop in Shiomachi, opened a tea shop under the trade name Masujin, and took up brewing after moving to Omachi. How Jintarō, named by the Agency, and Jinjirō, described as the founder, were related cannot be confirmed from published sources.

The front store was rebuilt in 1934. Brewing continued until 1945, when, the owner says, Murakami's breweries were merged under a wartime business consolidation order. The company formed by that merger is the forerunner of today's Taiyō Shuzō.

After the war Masujin Sake Shop traded mainly as a wholesaler before turning to retail sales over the counter. The owner recalls that the store was once given a modern shopfront and later returned to the look of a traditional townhouse.

The three registered buildings at Masujin Sake Shop

The three buildings of Masujin Sake Shop were registered on the same day under consecutive numbers: 15-0139 for the store, 15-0140 for the main house and sake brewery, and 15-0141 for the storehouse. The store was registered as a model of good design, and the other two as buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

Walk in from the street and the order is clear. The two-storey store faces the road. Behind its ground floor is a single-storey 12-mat room with an earth-floored passage running alongside, and beyond that the main house begins. East of the main house is the brewery, with the koji room to its north. The storehouse stands southeast of the brewery, its ridge running east to west.

By date, the main house and the storehouse belong to around 1892, and the store to 1934. What you see from the street is a Showa-era shopfront, with buildings from the rebuilding after the Meiji fire standing behind it. Each building's structure and details are covered on its own page.

Masujin Sake Shop in the townscape of Murakami

Omachi, where Masujin Sake Shop stands, was part of the merchant quarter of the Murakami castle town. Murakami City certifies shops that help sustain the historic streetscape, and its list as of January 2026 includes Masujin as a seller of local sake.

Masujin Sake Shop has also taken part in the town's townhouse events: the doll display in spring, the garden walk that follows it, and the folding-screen festival in autumn. The Murakami tourism association's page shows the shop interior dressed with dolls and screens during these events. The owner recalls that the spring doll tour itself grew out of dolls he once set in Masujin's show window.

Visiting Masujin Sake Shop

Masujin Sake Shop is a working shop, so you can walk into the store during business hours. According to the Murakami tourism association, it is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with a lunch break from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., and closes on Wednesdays and some other days. There is no charge to enter.

Inside are a sakabune, the wooden tank once used to press sake, and kayoi-tokkuri, the stoneware flasks customers brought back for refills, sometimes called "poor man's flasks." No source confirms whether photography is allowed, so ask the staff first. The main house, brewery and storehouse are not advertised as open to visitors.

Masujin Sake Shop is about a 20-minute walk or a 5-minute drive from Murakami Station on the JR Uetsu Main Line. From the Murakami-Senami-Onsen interchange on the Nihonkai-Tohoku Expressway it is also about 5 minutes by car. Parking for 2 large buses is available by reservation.

Names and spellings of Masujin Sake Shop

The registered names are 益甚酒店店舗 (Store), 益甚酒店主屋及び酒蔵 (Main House and Sake Brewery) and 益甚酒店土蔵 (Storehouse). The Agency gives the reading of the name as Masujin Saketen, and in English it is written Masujin Sake Shop.

The registered address is Omachi 194, while the shop itself uses the street address 1-19 Omachi. The Masuda Jinbei sake shop in Shiomachi is a separate business, described as the family line from which Masujin branched off.