Tsuji Honten Household Shrine

What Is the Tsuji Honten Household Shrine?

The Tsuji Honten Household Shrine (辻本店社舎, Tsuji Honten Yashirosha) is a mid-Meiji-period (1883 to 1897) private shrine in the garden of the Tsuji Honten sake brewery in Katsuyama, Maniwa City, Okayama Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. It stands north of the new reception wing of the main house, toward the southeast corner of the rear parlor's garden.

The Tsuji Honten Household Shrine covers just 0.2 square meters, far smaller than any of the brewery's other registered structures: a shrine less than 50 centimeters on a side. Even so, the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a small shrine built with full-scale craftsmanship.

Full-Scale Shrine Carpentry in Miniature

The Tsuji Honten Household Shrine is a one-bay shrine with a hip-and-gable roof and its entrance on the gable end, in the Tsumairi manner. A Kōhai porch roof with a cusped karahafu gable projects at the front, and every roof surface is sheathed in copper. The shrine sits on a large stone, and its round columns are tied with Nageshi tie beams.

The Kumimono bracket sets on the columns are of the one-step projecting demi-gumi type, and between them sit frog-leg Kaerumata struts. A veranda with a curved railing runs around the front and both sides, and the eaves are double-layered, with rafters, or Taruki, set closely in two tiers. All of these belong to proper shrine architecture, and here they are shrunk to a size you could almost hold in your hands, without any step skipped.

Miniature shrines modelled on full-size ones are found at many old family houses in Japan, but the Tsuji Honten Household Shrine carries the complete set of brackets, frog-leg struts, railings and double eaves, a shrine carpenter's work reproduced at reduced scale.

Why the Tsuji Honten Household Shrine Was Registered

The Tsuji Honten Household Shrine was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. A sake family would enshrine a deity on its own land to pray for good business and a safe household, and the shrine shows how worship was built into a place of both living and working.

Neither the Agency's description nor the brewery says which deity is enshrined in the Tsuji Honten Household Shrine, so this page confines itself to the building.

Visiting the Tsuji Honten Household Shrine

The Tsuji Honten Household Shrine stands in the garden of the rear parlor and is not open to the public. It lies inside the private area enclosed by the front gate wall and the garden wall and cannot be seen from the street.

For a look at the building, the photographs on Cultural Heritage Online and in the Agency's database are the best available source. Directions and visiting conditions for the whole site are on the Tsuji Honten Sake Brewery page.