Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney

What the Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney is

The Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney (萱島酒造煙突, Kayashima Shuzō Entotsu) is a brick chimney built in 1914 at Kayashima Sake Brewery in Tsunai, Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on January 16, 1998. It is octagonal in plan, an uncommon shape, and the brewery presents it on its company page as the symbol of Kayashima Sake Brewery.

The national database counts it as one structure rather than a building and classes it as an "other structure." It stands toward the south of the site, directly north of the Former Muromae.

Eight faces and iron bands

Brick brewery chimneys in Japan are commonly square or round in section. The Kayashima Chimney has eight faces, and as the sun moves each face takes the light differently, which keeps the outline crisp even from a distance.

The official description points to two design details: the treatment of the flue outlet at the top, and the iron bands wrapped around the shaft, both of which it calls accents. The bands tighten and reinforce the brick column from the outside, and at the same time they mark the tall shaft with regular horizontal lines.

Brewery chimneys generally carried smoke from the boilers or furnaces used to steam rice, and steaming is one of the stages the brewery lists in its own account of how its sake is made. The Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney went up in 1914, the same year as the big brewing storehouse, which suggests the brewery upgraded its heat source as part of the same expansion.

17 meters or 20 meters?

The sources disagree on the height of the Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney. The national database gives 17 meters in its structure field and 20 meters in the description on the same page; Kunisaki City's list also says 20 meters. This article gives both rather than choosing one.

Either way it is the tallest structure on the site. The official assessment is that it can be seen from far off, has long served as the brewery's emblem and as a local landmark, and it was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The entry for the rice storehouse on the road says the same from the other side: storehouse and chimney together are what people recognize as Kayashima Sake Brewery.

Seeing the Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney

The Kayashima Sake Brewery Chimney is the easiest of the brewery's registered structures to see. You do not need to enter the grounds: the octagonal top shows above the roofs from the surrounding streets. Frame it with the tiled roof of the rice storehouse from the prefectural road and you have the view both the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the brewery describe as the brewery's signature.

A close look at the bands and flue outlet means going inside the site, so ask at SAKE GALLERY Tohzai or call the brewery (+81-978-72-1181). If you photograph from the road, choose a spot that keeps clear of traffic and the brewery's own vehicles.