Nakashima Sake Brewery Main House

A Gable-Fronted Shop on the Tara Road

Nakashima Sake Brewery Main House (中島酒造場主屋, Nakashima Shuzōjō Shuoku) is the 1885 shop and residence of a sake brewery in Hamamachi, Kashima City, Saga Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 3 August 2006. It is a 2-storey timber building with a footprint of 513 square metres, facing north onto the Tara Ōkan, a branch route of the old Nagasaki Kaidō.

One registration covers several parts. At the centre is the shop, turned gable-end to the street. To its west come an entrance, a 2-storey detached reception wing and a storehouse; to its east, a warehouse whose ridge runs east to west. Behind the shop's earth floor is the kamaba, the rice-steaming room, which links south to the brewery's fermentation hall.

The shop still trades, so the front of the building is a working sake counter you can walk into.

Plastered Timber, and Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Nakashima Sake Brewery Main House as Nuriya-zukuri: a timber frame whose outer walls are sealed under clay and lime plaster, so that very little bare wood faces the street. The roof is hip-and-gable, laid with sangawara pantiles, and the shop is Tsumairi, entered from the gable side.

Registration came under the criterion for contribution to the historic landscape. On Sakagura-dōri, white storehouses and tiled townhouses line both sides of the old road. The Nakashima brewing buildings stand behind the shop, out of sight; the Main House is the one that meets the street head-on, and it gives the brewery its public face.

The storehouse attached on its west side belongs to this registration. It is a different building from the separately registered Nakashima Sake Brewery Storehouse across the road.

What to Look For

Start with the upper floor of the shop front. The window is a timber lattice, and on either side of it sits a plastered Todobukuro, the box that swallows the storm shutters when they are slid back. Fine vertical slats between two flat white panels: nearly all the character of the facade comes from that pairing.

Then look down, and up. The Kashima City Tourism Association points out the iron rings by the entrance, once used for tethering horses, and the toribusuma on the roof, a cylindrical tile that juts from the ridge end above the Onigawara. From the street it makes the ridge look a notch longer than it is.

Walk a few paces west along the frontage and the plan reads clearly: shop, then entrance, then the reception wing behind. The Nakashima Sake Brewery Main House was a brewing family's house and guest rooms as well as its storefront.

Visiting the Main House

The shop section of the Nakashima Sake Brewery Main House is open during business hours for tasting and buying sake. There is no announced public access to the reception wing or the living quarters, so beyond the shop the building is seen from outside. To take in the lattice and both shutter boxes at once, cross to the far side of the road.

No posted rule on photography was found; ask the staff before photographing inside the shop. Opening hours and directions for the whole brewery are gathered on the Nakashima Sake Brewery page.