Yano Sake Brewery Main House

A 1904 House Facing the Old Tara Road

The Yano Sake Brewery Main House (矢野酒造主屋, Yano Shuzō Shuoku) is a two-storey wooden house built in 1904 at Yano Sake Brewery in Takatsuhara, Kashima City, Saga Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 3, 2006.

It faces east onto the old Tara branch of the Nagasaki Kaidō, with a frontage of 6 Ken, about 10.9 meters if one ken is taken as 1.82 meters, and a building area of 284 square meters. Of the brewery's seven listed buildings, this is the one a walker on the old road sees first.

A Gable Turned to the Street

The roof is a pantiled (Sangawara-buki) hip-and-gable of the Irimoya-zukuri type, and the entrance is on the gable side (Tsumairi). What the Yano Sake Brewery Main House shows the street is not a long eave but the triangular gable of its roof.

On the ground floor a tiled canopy (Hisashi) shelters a doorway toward the south end and a projecting bay window to the north. The upper storey is sealed in white lime plaster (Shikkui). A busy, open shopfront below and an almost blank white wall above give the facade its character.

The Saga Prefectural Heritage Database singles out the same view: the white plaster walls of the main house and the former rice mill, seen from the street to the east.

Inside the Yano Sake Brewery Main House

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs description, an earth-floored passage (Doma) runs from front to back along the south side. The front of the north side is an office that keeps its earth floor, and behind it the living rooms are arranged in 2 rows of 4.

An office at the street and family rooms behind, all under one roof, is the classic plan of a brewer's house. The former rice mill continues to the south across an earth-floored gap, so the passage on that side may also have served traffic to the mill and the storehouses behind.

Why the Main House Was Registered

The Yano Sake Brewery Main House is registration number 41-0053, listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. The brewery's own website calls it the omoya and names its registered status at the top of its introduction to the premises.

It was built in 1904, the same year as the former rice mill. With both street-front buildings going up together, the pairing of white-walled house and mill that still defines the brewery's face on the old road took shape at once.

Seeing the Main House

The east front of the Yano Sake Brewery Main House stands on the street and can be seen from the public road. The gable, the tiled canopy and the bay window are easiest to take in together from the opposite side of the road.

The building the brewery offers to visitors is Tatsumi no Kura, the converted former rice mill; nothing indicates that the living rooms of the main house are open. Check shop hours and whether photography is allowed with the brewery before you go.