A Merchant Wing With a Hole Through the Middle
The Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki (酒持田本店向座敷, also written Sakemochida Honten Mukozashiki) is a two-storey wooden merchant building at Katahara-chō, Hirata-chō, in Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture, built in 1933 and entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 29 March 2019.
The name needs unpacking. A zashiki is a formal tatami room, the space a merchant household kept for receiving people who mattered. Mukō means facing, or opposite. This building sits across the street from the family's shop-and-main-house and looks straight back at it, which is where the term comes from. The main house faces south; the reception wing faces north. Between them runs Momen Kaidō.
At 162 square metres of building area, the wing is five times the footprint of the small storehouse next door to the east, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out its proportions: a gabled roof of sangawara pantiles over a full two storeys built unusually tall. Merchant houses of the Edo tradition tend to keep their upper floor low, half a storey squeezed under the rafters. This one does not. The 1933 date explains the confidence.
Now the detail that makes the building worth a stop. Its rear elevation stands on the Hirata Funagawa, the canal that connected Hirata to Lake Shinji, and a passage runs through the centre of the building from the street to the water. Locally that passage is a kakedashi. Stand at the right angle on the street and you can see daylight off the canal through the middle of a private house.
The interior has been altered over the years. The registration file notes this and then notes what survived it: the exterior and the plan still hold their traditional form clearly. Repairs were carried out in 2010 and again in 2013.
What the Kakedashi Tells You About Hirata
Kakedashi were the working edge of this town. Along the Hirata Funagawa they served as landing points where cargo came off boats and as places to draw water for daily use, and they stayed in service until the Taishō era. A building with one cut through its middle is not making an architectural gesture. It is solving a problem: the household needed the street for customers and the canal for freight, and the plot sat between the two.
Hirata grew as a market town on that waterway. By the closing decades of the Edo period it had become the collection point for Unshū cotton, and the figures are worth stating. Trade at the cotton market ran to roughly 220,000 tan a year toward the end of the period, close to forty per cent of the cotton the Matsue domain sold outside its own territory. The wealthy Mitsui house is said to have sent buyers. Almost all of it left by boat.
The building is protected as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, registration number 32-196, granted in the 92nd round under the criterion for structures contributing to the historic landscape of the country. That category should not be confused with designation as an Important Cultural Property or a National Treasure. Registration, introduced in 1996 for buildings of roughly fifty years or more, asks only for notification before major changes, which is why a working merchant compound can hold five registered buildings and still function as a business.
Sakemochida Honten, founded in 1877 and the brewer of the Yamasan Masamune label, has five buildings on the register. The shop-and-main-house, the old brewing storehouse and the inspection house were registered on 28 June 2017; this reception wing and the neighbouring storehouse followed on 29 March 2019.
The mukō-zashiki is also a local building type rather than a one-off. The Ishibashi family residence, a short walk away in the same district, has its own registered mukō-zashiki, added to the register in 2010. Two examples on one street suggest a settled local habit: put the formal reception rooms in a separate building across the road, and keep the main house for trade and daily life.
Walking Momen Kaidō
Momen Kaidō, the "Cotton Road", runs in an L through the Shinmachi, Katahara-chō and Miyanomachi districts, about 300 metres east to west with a further 200 metres running north from the eastern end. Some thirty townhouses survive along it.
The local grammar repays attention. Houses are gable-entry with plastered walls, a fire-conscious form written in Japanese as kirizuma tsumairi nurikabe-zukuri. Look for namako-kabe, square dark tiles laid in a diamond grid with plaster ridged along each joint, and for Izumo lattice, a window screen that alternates two long bars with two short ones and is sometimes called parent-and-child lattice. Hirata also favours a left-handed pantile that reverses the usual overlap. The street still has one sake brewery and three soy sauce makers working on it, along with a ginger-candy shop of long standing.
The reception wing is private property in daily use and is not open to visitors. Izumo City records its ownership as private, while the Agency's file leaves the ownership field blank. There is no admission and no interior viewing; what you can do is stand on the street and read the elevation, then look for the passage through it. Photography from the public road is unrestricted.
Two things nearby are open. The storehouse immediately east, also registered in 2019, now operates as RITA Izumo Hirata Sakemochida Kura, a whole-building lodging for one party. And the brewery itself, directly opposite at 785 Hirata-chō, runs a guided tour: about sixty minutes, 3,500 yen per person, two to ten people, with starts at 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00, ending with a tasting of three sakes. It is reserved through the Momen Kaidō activity booking site, not by walking in. The brewery's tall chimney with its Yamasan crest marks the spot from either end of the street.
Getting there: Unshū Hirata Station on the Ichibata Electric Railway Kita-Matsue Line is about ten minutes on foot. By car, allow around fifteen minutes from Izumo Enmusubi Airport and around twenty from the Shinji interchange on the San'in Expressway.
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Q&A
- Is the Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki open to the public?
- No. It is privately owned and in daily use, with no admission or interior viewing. The exterior can be seen freely from Momen Kaidō, and photography from the public street is unrestricted.
- What does the name Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki mean?
- A zashiki is a formal tatami reception room and mukō means facing. The building stands across Momen Kaidō from the family's shop-and-main-house and faces it directly, the main house looking south and the wing looking north.
- What is the kakedashi at the Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki?
- A passage cut through the centre of the building from the street to the Hirata Funagawa behind it. Along this canal, kakedashi served as boat landings and everyday water access, in use until the Taishō era.
- When was the Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki built and registered?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to 1933, with repairs in 2010 and 2013. It was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 29 March 2019, under registration number 32-196.
- What else can I see near the Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki?
- The registered storehouse next door, now the RITA Izumo Hirata Sakemochida Kura lodging, and the brewery opposite, which runs a sixty-minute guided tour at 3,500 yen per person by advance booking. Momen Kaidō itself has around thirty surviving townhouses.
Basic Information
| Name | Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki (酒持田本店向座敷) |
|---|---|
| Location | 810 Katahara-chō, Hirata-chō, Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building), registration no. 32-196 |
| Year Designated | Registered 29 March 2019 (92nd round of registrations) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Wooden, two storeys, tiled roof, building area 162 m² |
| Owner | Private (Izumo City records private ownership; the Agency's file leaves the field blank) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public. Exterior viewable from Momen Kaidō. |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00012802
- Cultural Heritage Online: Sakemochida Honten Mukōzashiki
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/413325
- Izumo City: List of Designated and Registered Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.izumo.shimane.jp/www/contents/1142485283146/index.html
- Izumo Tourism Guide: Momen Kaidō
- https://izumo-kankou.gr.jp/5294
- Momen Kaidō official site: area map
- https://momen-kaidou.jp/map/
- Sakemochida Honten Co., Ltd. official site
- https://www.sakemochida.jp/
- Momen Kaidō Tanbōjō: brewery tour booking
- https://booking.momen-kaidou.jp/activity?planId=54
Last verified: 2026.08.21