Yano Sake Brewery Annex

A Taishō Guest Wing Behind the Main House

The Yano Sake Brewery Annex (矢野酒造離れ, Yano Shuzō Hanare) is a two-storey wooden guest building of around 1921 at Yano Sake Brewery in Takatsuhara, Kashima City, Saga Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 3, 2006.

It runs east to west behind the main house, joined to it by a roofed corridor, and has a building area of 98 square meters. The Yano Sake Brewery Annex sits between the street-front house and the row of storehouses to the west.

Boarded Walls under a Hip-and-Gable Roof

The roof is a pantiled hip-and-gable (Irimoya-zukuri), and the outer walls are clad in vertical boards. Tiled canopies (Hisashi) run along the east and south sides.

Where the main house and former rice mill face the street in white lime plaster, the Yano Sake Brewery Annex is finished in timber. Set among brewing and storage buildings, it keeps the look of a domestic building rather than a storehouse.

Two Floors of Reception Rooms

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the ground floor of the Yano Sake Brewery Annex as a 15-mat reception room (Zashiki) with a formal alcove arrangement, plus a 10-mat anteroom. A veranda runs around three sides, east, south and west.

The upper floor repeats the same plan, so the building stacks two identical suites of formal rooms. Placing a large Tokonoma room on each floor in a separate building, apart from the family rooms of the main house, suggests a deliberate effort to give guests their own space.

The canopies on the east and south and the verandas on three sides hint that a garden once lay in front of the rooms, though no record of the original garden has been found.

Registration and the Taishō Years

The Yano Sake Brewery Annex is registration number 41-0054, listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

Its date of around 1921 matches that of the west storehouse and falls within the years when the fifth head, Yano Kazuyoshi, was enlarging the business. No source explains in detail why or for whom the annex was built.

Seeing the Annex

The Yano Sake Brewery Annex lies behind the main house and is barely visible from the old road. Because it is reached through the main house by a corridor, it cannot really be seen as a whole without entering the property.

The brewery offers only Tatsumi no Kura, the converted former rice mill, to visitors, and nothing indicates that the annex is open. It stands on private brewery land, so please do not enter the grounds uninvited.