Marumoto Family Residence and Marumoto Sake Brewery

A brewer's compound among the paddies

Marumoto Family Residence and Marumoto Sake Brewery (丸本家住宅及び丸本酒造, Marumoto-ke Jūtaku oyobi Marumoto Shuzō) is a sake-brewing household in Honjo, Kamogata-cho, Asakuchi City, Okayama Prefecture, founded in 1867, whose eleven buildings and structures of the mid-Meiji to early Showa periods were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 1 December 2003.

The owner is Marumoto Shuzo Co., Ltd., best known for its Chikurin label. Asakuchi City lists the ensemble under the single heading Marumoto Family Residence and Marumoto Sake Brewery, eleven buildings. In the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, though, each of the eleven is a separate registration, numbered consecutively from 33-0066 to 33-0076.

The property sits against rice fields. A stone retaining wall firms the drop to the paddies on one side and a road runs along the south edge. At the centre is the family's reception wing; around it stand fermentation stores and storage sheds, so that what an outsider sees is a line of white plastered walls under grey tile.

Sake is still made here. The brewery says that brewing continues inside the registered buildings, and the fact that this is a working business rather than a museum shapes almost everything about how the site can be seen.

How the compound is laid out

Read side by side, the Agency's short descriptions allow the plan to be pieced together. The way in is from the south, and moving north the uses run in sequence: trade, brewing, family life, water.

The south front: shop and entrance

An approach opens on the south side of the compound, and the Marumoto Sake Brewery Shop stands on its west flank, two storeys high, with an earth-floored sales room and a counting desk below and a tatami room above. South of the shop are the side gate, wall and stone steps: a wall set on a cut-stone embankment raised above a river, and a flight of dressed-stone steps up to the shop door. Along the southern boundary, the long South Storehouse follows the road and bends with it.

The west edge: fermenting and steaming

The shop joins the West Storehouse directly on its west side. That storehouse marks the western limit of the site and is where the mash was fermented; against its south gable, in the south-west corner, is the kettle room where rice was steamed. Between the back of the shop and the reception wing, the Connecting Corridor runs along the east flank of the West Storehouse as a covered loading bay.

The centre: reception wing and garden

In the middle of the compound, ringed by storehouses, the reception wing faces north. It was built for receiving guests and is the only Meiji-period building among the eleven. A small garden lies to its south, closed on the south and west by the Marumoto Family Residence Wall.

The east and north: the big store and the well

East of the reception wing, on higher ground, is the East Storehouse, at 747 square metres the largest of the group. Beyond it the narrow East Storage Shed, 30 metres long, forms the eastern edge. The northern tip of the site is the water source, with a stone well under a small tiled roof and a retaining wall along the paddy boundary.

If you were to walk it in order, you would start at the southern approach, look up at the shop and side gate, trace the West Storehouse and kettle room, pass along the corridor to the reception wing, then continue east past the two eastern stores and finish at the well. In practice the yard is not open for wandering, as explained below.

Shimizuya and the dates of the buildings

According to the company's own history, the first head of the house, Marumoto Kanomatsu, began brewing in 1867 under the trade name Shimizuya, the "clear water house", a name said to come from the quality of the water. The Agency's description of the well at the north end calls it the source of that name.

The eleven listings fall into three layers. Oldest is the mid-Meiji reception wing. Next comes a large early Taisho group: the shop, the side gate with its wall and steps, the West Storehouse, the South Storehouse, the East Storage Shed, the residence wall, and the well with its retaining wall. The East Storehouse is dated precisely to 1913. The last layer is early Showa, when the kettle room was built around 1932, the Connecting Corridor was added, and the West, East and South storehouses were extended.

Those layers match the brewery's own timeline. It records a boom in 1918 and 1919, when Kamogata counted 13 breweries, and a push for greater output between 1932 and 1936 through new brewing equipment and new buildings. The Taisho storehouses and the early Showa kettle room and corridor read as the physical trace of those two rounds of investment.

The structure shows the same shift. The roofs of the West Storehouse, South Storehouse, East Storage Shed, kettle room and corridor are carried on Western-style trusses, while the East Storehouse is framed in round logs right down to its rafters and joists. The brewers kept the familiar outward look of tile and white plaster and changed what was inside the roof.

Eleven listings and what they were listed for

All eleven were registered on 1 December 2003 and gazetted on 25 December of that year, in the thirty-ninth round of registrations. All eleven were listed under the same criterion: contribution to the historic landscape of the nation.

Reading the Agency's descriptions together, nearly every one names the part of the compound's outward appearance that the building is responsible for. The shop orders the south front; the West Storehouse is the main element of the west and south sides; the East Storehouse holds the north-east, the East Storage Shed the eastern edge. Of the South Storehouse, the Agency writes that its long wall with regular small windows, taken together with the paddies around it, produces a landscape of its own. The case rests less on any single building than on the way the whole household still holds together as one compound in the fields.

Both the brewery and the Okayama Tourism Federation describe Marumoto as the first sake brewery in Okayama Prefecture to be listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The sources disagree on the date. The brewery and the tourism federation give 19 September 2003, whereas the Agency's database and Asakuchi City's list both give 1 December 2003 as the date of registration. This page follows the Agency. The September date may belong to an earlier stage of the listing process, but that could not be confirmed from published material.

Visiting

Marumoto Family Residence and Marumoto Sake Brewery is a working brewery and does not keep its buildings open to the public. The only way into the inner yard is on one of the brewery's pre-booked tours.

Brewery tours

Tours run only on dates the brewery sets and are booked through the application page on its website. There are two sessions, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., each for about 10 to 15 people. Participants must be of junior high school age or older, and junior and senior high school students must come with a guardian. The fee, described as a contribution to the upkeep of the cultural property, is 30,000 to 50,000 yen per group. A tour covers an explanation of the brewery, a tasting, a look at the rice-polishing room and questions; the brewery states plainly that the tour follows the brewing process rather than explaining the architecture.

Hygiene rules are strict because live yeasts and moulds are at work. On the day, visitors are asked not to eat natto, yoghurt or citrus fruit, to wash their hands with soap before entering, and to wear the cap, white coat and mask that the brewery supplies. Stairs inside are steep and pipework crosses the floors, and the brewery asks that small children and elderly visitors think carefully before joining.

A notice of January 2026 on the brewery's website says that no tour dates are currently scheduled, and it was still the latest notice when checked on 25 September 2026. Anyone planning a visit should first ask whether tours have resumed.

Buying sake and opening days

The Okayama Tourism Federation lists sales and tasting at the brewery. Hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It is closed on Sundays, public holidays, Golden Week, the Obon holidays and over New Year, and also on Saturdays through spring and summer. The brewery's website has the Saturday closures beginning in March and the tourism federation in April, so telephone ahead in March. The number is 0865-44-3155.

Getting there

From Kamogata Station on the JR San'yō Line it is about 15 minutes by taxi. By car it is about 5 minutes from the Kamogata interchange of the San'yō Expressway, and there is parking for about 10 cars. The postal address is 2485 Honjo, Kamogata-cho, Asakuchi City; the Agency's database adds the sub-district name Yoshimune.

No photography policy has been published. If you want to photograph the buildings, ask when booking or at reception. Hours, fees and closing days were checked on 25 September 2026.