Kayashima Sake Brewery Rice Storehouse

What the Kayashima Sake Brewery Rice Storehouse is

The Kayashima Sake Brewery Rice Storehouse (萱島酒造米蔵, Kayashima Shuzō Komegura) is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri earthen-walled storehouse built in 1916 at Kayashima Sake Brewery in Tsunai, Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on January 16, 1998. It has a tiled roof and a building area of 171 m².

The Kayashima Rice Storehouse stands directly on the prefectural road, closer to the street than any other registered building at the brewery. The official description says it is known, together with the brick chimney, as the building that stands for Kayashima Sake Brewery.

Plaster above, vertical boards below

The Rice Storehouse is a plain storehouse finished in Shikkui lime plaster. Its lower walls are clad in vertical boards, Tateita-bari, carried up as high as the upper-floor windows. The boards protect the part of the wall that takes rain and splash, and white plaster shows only above them. That high line between timber and plaster is what gives the building its look.

The windows have simple outer frames and a single sliding board shutter each. Board shutters rather than glass suit a building meant to hold the brewery's raw rice.

The date fits a sequence. The brewing storehouse went up in 1914 and the Nakagura in 1915; the Kayashima Sake Brewery Rice Storehouse followed in 1916. The brewery built its mashing and pressing capacity first and its rice store on the street afterwards. The gate storehouse attached to it dates from the same year.

Why the Rice Storehouse was registered

The Kayashima Rice Storehouse was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. As a building it is modest, with little ornament. Its value lies in where it stands: on the road, it forms the street face of Kayashima Sake Brewery together with the octagonal chimney behind it.

With the large Taisho-era storehouses massed behind, the white walls on the street and the chimney rising above them are the brewery's public face.

Seeing the Kayashima Sake Brewery Rice Storehouse

Because the Kayashima Sake Brewery Rice Storehouse faces the prefectural road, you can see its exterior without entering the grounds. Step back across the road and the line between boards and plaster, the board-shuttered windows and the octagonal chimney above the roofs all fit in one view. The interior is not open.

When photographing from the road, choose a spot clear of traffic and watch for the brewery's vehicles. The SAKE GALLERY Tohzai shop on site is the natural starting point for a visit on this street side.