Tsuji Honten Office

What Is the Tsuji Honten Office?

The Tsuji Honten Office (辻本店事務所, Tsuji Honten Jimusho) is a late-Edo-period earthen-walled Dozo-zukuri building attached to the south end of the shop and main house at the Tsuji Honten sake brewery in Katsuyama, Maniwa City, Okayama Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. It is an office today, but it began as a row of storerooms.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the Tsuji Honten Office to the closing decades of the Edo period (roughly 1830 to 1868) and records a renovation in 1979. It is a single-storey building with a partial upper floor, a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof in Sangawara-buki tiles, and a footprint of 148 square meters.

From Storerooms to Office: The Story of the Tsuji Honten Office

Inside, the Tsuji Honten Office was once divided, from north to south, into a general storeroom, a soy sauce store and a barn. Part of the upper floor and some of the partitions were removed to open up the present office. The record tells us, in passing, that this sake brewery also set aside a room for keeping soy sauce.

The way in has changed too. The ground-floor windows and door on the west side, facing the street, are later additions; originally the rooms were reached from the shop next door. It seems likely that the street entrance dates from the 1979 work, but the Agency only calls these openings later additions and does not say when they were made.

The conversion left the earthen exterior largely alone, and that is why the Tsuji Honten Office was registered for contributing to the historic landscape: the Agency notes that it gives the street front a firm, well-defined edge.

What to Look For on the Tsuji Honten Office

The walls of the Tsuji Honten Office are finished in white plaster with Namako-kabe tiling along the base. The shop and main house to the north uses namako tiling on its upper-floor walls, so from the street the two grids step up and down in height as they run together.

Knowing that the street-side windows and door were cut in later, look at how the plaster is finished around them compared with the untouched stretches of wall. Katsuyama has many storehouses whose thick walls were opened up in this way; here the change is on record.

Visiting the Tsuji Honten Office

The Tsuji Honten Office is a working company office, and the interior is not open to visitors. The exterior can be seen from the old Izumo road. Step a little south on the opposite side of the street to see how its roof joins that of the shop and main house.

Please avoid lingering in front of the door during business hours. Directions and visiting conditions for the whole site are on the Tsuji Honten Sake Brewery page.