Koyanagi Sake Brewery West Water Tank

A brick cistern wedged between chimney and kettle room

Koyanagi Sake Brewery West Water Tank (小柳酒造西貯水槽, Koyanagi Shuzō Nishi Chosuisō) is a brick water tank of 1941 at 903-1 Ogicho, Ogi City, Saga Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 14 February 2002.

It is built against the east face of the chimney and the south face of the kettle room. The plan is a rectangle of 1.7 by 2.8 metres, the height is 4.5 metres and the footprint 4.8 square metres. The tank sits on brick piers, and over it runs a north-south roof of corrugated iron in the maneki form, one slope longer than the other.

Two iron tie bars now pass round the tank itself. They are a later addition, put there to stop the brick walls bulging under the pressure of the water inside, and they are the clearest evidence that this thing was filled and used.

The point of standing it on legs

The essential move at Koyanagi Sake Brewery West Water Tank is that the vessel does not sit on the ground. Brick piers lift it, so that of the 4.5 metres of height the lower part is leg and the upper part is tank.

The reason is head. Water high up carries pressure by virtue of its fall. To deliver it to rice-washing and steaming without machinery, the simplest answer is to keep the surface above the point of use. Water pumped up is held here and then distributed by gravity. The pump house on the same site did the lifting.

The roof is a maneki roof, a gable with one slope drawn out longer than the other so that a step appears at the ridge, running north to south. The covering is corrugated iron, light and easy to work, and well suited to roofing something this small.

The footprint is 4.8 square metres. Among the thirteen listed structures here only the East Water Tank, at 4 square metres, is smaller. As a piece of listed heritage the scale is extreme, but as a piece of the process it sits at a point that could not be left out.

A relic of mechanisation

The listing criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of the nation, and the registration number is 41-0033. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes Koyanagi Sake Brewery West Water Tank as one of the surviving traces of the modernisation of the brewing plant.

What modernisation meant here was that the handling of water passed from people to equipment. Water once carried in buckets from a well or the channel was now pumped, stored high and piped. The structures that made the change possible were put up in 1941, in the same campaign as the chimney, and the East Water Tank dates from that year as well.

Position is part of the design. Setting the tank against the east face of the chimney and the south face of the kettle room put the store immediately beside the heaviest point of use and kept the pipe runs short. The gathering of chimney, both tanks and pump house on the south side of the kettle room is the result of concentrating fire and water in one place.

Look for the line where pier becomes tank. Following the height of the mortar joints shows whether the brickwork runs on unbroken through the change. The two tie bars cross the wall just above it.

Visiting

Koyanagi Sake Brewery West Water Tank is a structure, not a building to be entered. Only the outside can be seen, and there is no separate board or charge for it.

The chimney is the landmark. The tank is built hard against its east face, so finding the foot of the chimney finds the tank. The East Water Tank stands just beyond it, and comparing the two shows how differently their piers were built.

The yard can be entered during the hours of the Ogi Distillery, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with irregular closing days, though the ground south of the kettle room belongs to the working side and how close you can get depends on the day. No photography policy has been published, so ask at reception. Directions and parking are set out on the Koyanagi Sake Brewery page. Details here were checked on 14 September 2026.