Nakashima Sake Brewery Koji Room

The Small Room Where the Koji Grew

Nakashima Sake Brewery Koji Room (中島酒造場麹室, Nakashima Shuzōjō Kōjishitsu) is a mid-Meiji koji-making room at a sake brewery in Hamamachi, Kashima City, Saga Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 3 August 2006. It is a single-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse of 37 square metres, set against the east side of the brewery's Brewing Storehouse with the two south gables in line.

Koji is steamed rice inoculated with the mould Aspergillus oryzae, whose enzymes turn starch into the sugars that yeast can ferment. The mould is fussy about warmth and humidity, the work runs through the night, and the room has to stay warm and damp throughout. A small chamber enclosed in thick earth walls suits that job well.

Of the five registered Nakashima buildings, the Koji Room is the smallest.

How It Is Built, and Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives its size as 3 and a half by 3 bays, under a gabled roof of sangawara pantiles. The lower part of the outer walls is faced with brick. The west wall, the one facing the Brewing Storehouse, is finished in mortar, and the doorway is at its south end. On the south side, a tiled pent roof continues without a break from the Brewing Storehouse.

That doorway placement says most of what you need to know. Finished koji went straight into the fermentation vats, and the door of the Nakashima Sake Brewery Koji Room opens onto the building where it was needed.

Registration came under the criterion for contribution to the historic landscape. Sharing a roofline with the Brewing Storehouse, the Koji Room shows on its exterior that it was built as one step in a process, not as a standalone store.

What to Look For

The eye goes first to the change of wall finishes: brick facing on the lower walls, and mortar on the west face alone. For so small a building that is a good deal of variety, and the mortar is reserved for the one wall with the door.

Then follow the pent roof along the south side. The tiles run on without a break between the Brewing Storehouse and the Nakashima Sake Brewery Koji Room, the clearest sign that the two were used as a pair.

Visiting the Koji Room

The Nakashima Sake Brewery Koji Room stands deep inside the property, east of the Brewing Storehouse, and its interior is not open. There is no announcement of tours from the shop into the storehouses, so it can be seen only where visible from outside the property, and at 37 square metres it is easily hidden by its neighbours.

No posted rule on photography was found; do not enter the yard. Opening hours and directions for the whole brewery are gathered on the Nakashima Sake Brewery page.