Kayashima Sake Brewery

A Kunisaki sake brewery founded in 1873, with 14 registered structures

Kayashima Sake Brewery (萱島酒造, Kayashima Shuzō) is a sake brewery in Tsunai, Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture, founded in 1873 and known for its Nishi-no-Seki label; 14 of its storehouses, chimney, gates, wall and family residence buildings were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 16, 1998.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the reading as Kayashima, and the brewery itself uses that spelling in English, though Japanese travel guides often voice the name as Kayajima. The site sits on the eastern side of the Kunisaki Peninsula, a short drive from Oita Airport.

The label has a story of its own. According to the brewery, the second-generation head, Yonesaburō, named it in the late 1880s or 1890s: nishi for western Japan and seki for a sumo grand champion, a declared ambition to make the leading sake of the west. The brewery took first prize at the first national sake competition in 1907. In December 1963 it put ginjō, a style until then brewed only for competitions and never sold, on the market under the name Hizōshu, a move the brewery describes as the first of its kind in Japan.

Four decades of building, from 1894 to 1935

The 14 registered structures at Kayashima Sake Brewery fall into clear building phases. Following the national database, from oldest to newest:

• 1894: the Former Muromae and the Cold Storehouse (Former Brewhouse)
• 1897: the Kayashima Family Residence Annex
• 1906: the North Storehouse
• 1914: the brewing storehouse, the chimney and the Back Gate
• 1915: the Nakagura pressing house and the Former Koji Room
• 1916: the Rice Storehouse and the gate storehouse
• Early Showa period (late 1920s to 1930s): the Well House
• 1933: the Kayashima Family Residence Main House
• 1935: the wooden wall

The burst between 1914 and 1916 is the striking part. In three years the brewery raised its largest building, the brewing storehouse with a footprint of 1,123 m², the 26-bay Nakagura, the octagonal chimney and the rice storehouse. The brewery notes that these late Meiji and early Taisho buildings are still in daily use, so the complex reads as a record of a small Meiji brewhouse scaling up almost overnight.

The registrations run consecutively from 44-0020 to 44-0033 and were gazetted on February 12, 1998. Thirteen were listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country; the annex alone was listed as a model of design. The 12 brewery structures are owned by Kayashima Sake Brewery Ltd.; the owner field for the two residence buildings is blank in the national database.

How the Kayashima Sake Brewery site is laid out

Pieced together from the official descriptions, the Kayashima Sake Brewery site has three layers: a street front, the family house in the middle, and the working brewery at the back.

The earthen-walled rice storehouse stands directly on the prefectural road, with the small gate storehouse attached to it. The main house sits near the center of the plot and connects to the brewery office on its north side; the Meiji-era annex stands to its southeast, facing a garden.

The brewing storehouse anchors the rear. The North Storehouse runs at right angles off its east side, the Well House stands to its west, and the Back Gate adjoins a lean-to on its south side. The long Nakagura runs north to south. On the south side of the plot the Former Muromae sits crosswise to the Nakagura, with the chimney just to its north and the Former Koji Room to its south. The Cold Storehouse lies toward the west, and a 65-meter wooden wall closes the southern boundary.

Visiting Kayashima Sake Brewery

Kayashima Sake Brewery is a working brewery, and most of the registered buildings are part of production; their interiors are not open as a matter of routine. The brewery shop, SAKE GALLERY Tohzai, occupies a converted former rice-polishing building on the site and is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Closing days follow the brewery's own business calendar, posted on its website.

Brewery tours are harder to pin down. The Oita Sake Brewers Association lists tours by reservation from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. for groups of about 20 to 30, but the same page still carries a notice that visits were suspended during the pandemic. Call the brewery (+81-978-72-1181) before planning around a tour. There is no published photography policy, so ask the shop staff before taking pictures inside the grounds.

By car, Kayashima Sake Brewery is about 10 minutes from Oita Airport and about 40 minutes from the Hayami interchange on the Higashikyushu Expressway. By public transport, take an Oita Kotsu bus bound for Kunisaki from JR Kitsuki Station, about 53 minutes, and get off at Tsunai; the brewery is roughly a 2-minute walk. Buses are infrequent.