Iimori Sake Brewery Main House

The Street Front of Iimori Sake Brewery

Iimori Sake Brewery Main House (飯盛酒造主屋, Iimori Shuzō Shuoku) is a late Taisho-era brewer's house facing north onto the old Tara road of the Nagasaki Kaidō at 122 Furueda Ko, Kashima City, Saga Prefecture, and it was entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 3, 2006. It is a timber building of 2 storeys under a tiled roof, with a building area of 347 square meters.

The frontage runs 10.5 ken (a ken is roughly 1.8 meters). The hip-and-gable roof is laid with pantiles, and the plan splits into an earth-floored Doma on the east and the family's living quarters on the west. A boiler room is attached behind the doma on the south side, so the fire of the brewery, the street-side work floor and the family rooms ran on in one sequence.

Of the five Registered Tangible Cultural Property buildings at the Iimori brewery, the main house is the only one that turns its face to the street.

Why the Iimori Main House Was Registered

It was registered as a building that contributes to the historic landscape of the country. With its long frontage along the old road, the Iimori Sake Brewery Main House is part of the streetscape of Sakagura-dōri, the brewery street of Hizen Hamashuku.

What the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out is the change of wall construction from east to west. The doma section is finished in Nuriya-zukuri, with plaster carried over the posts so that no timber shows, a technique long used in Japanese townhouses as protection against fire; it is the side that adjoins the boiler room. The living quarters to the west are built in the Shinkabe manner, with the posts left exposed in the wall face.

The living quarters hold six rooms in two rows on the ground floor and three rooms of 10 tatami mats each upstairs, and both floors have verandas front and back. From the street it reads as a merchant's shop front; inside, it opens into reception rooms edged by verandas.

The date is disputed. The Agency gives the late Taisho era, while Kashima City's historic character plan, citing a 1999 survey report, dates the Iimori Sake Brewery Main House to 1928. This page follows the Agency, whose record is the basis of the registration.

What to Look For at the Iimori Main House

Stand on the far side of the street and read the facade of the Iimori Main House from east to west. Over the doma the wall is smooth, plastered flat; once you reach the living quarters the lines of the posts appear in the wall. Because a single large hip-and-gable roof covers both halves, the switch is all the easier to see.

Against the east wall of the doma stands a brick chimney, registered on the same day as a separate property. It sits east of the house and just north of the boiler room, and taking in the eaves of the house and the chimney together shows how close the family lived to the brewery's fire.

Visiting the Iimori Sake Brewery Main House

Iimori Sake Brewery now runs as a shop for pickles cured in sake lees and local sake, and customers can go in during opening hours. There is no published offer to show the living quarters or the upstairs rooms of the Iimori Sake Brewery Main House, so plan on seeing the exterior and the shop front only.

The whole front can be seen from the old road. With a frontage of 10.5 ken, you will need to step back to the opposite side of the street to take it in at once. Ask the staff before taking photographs inside the shop. Directions and opening hours are on the Iimori Sake Brewery page.