The Face the Brewery Shows the Street
The Nakawa Shoten Office (中和商店事務所, also written Nakawa-shōten Jimusho) is a timber-framed commercial building of the late Taishō era in the Sarada district of Ikedachō, Miyoshi City, Tokushima Prefecture, remodelled in 1957 and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 5 December 2019.
It faces west onto Sugio-dōri, one of the older streets of Ikeda, and it is the only part of this brewery compound that an ordinary passer-by is meant to see. Everything behind it, the brewing hall, the mixing storehouse, the lodging for the seasonal brewers and the brick chimney, sits back from the road and is registered separately.
The building is not one volume but three linked in sequence. A two-storey office block stands at the north end. A single-storey wing runs south from it. Behind both, a residential range continues into the depth of the lot. Total floor area at ground level is 140 square metres, the roof partly slate and partly tile, the whole of it wood-framed.
Two Vocabularies Under One Roof
The Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the office under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country, with the number 36-0201, the first of five items listed at this address that day. The reasoning turns on the way the building handles its two functions.
Outside, the ground floor of the street front is faced in scratch tile, the vertically combed ceramic cladding that spread through Japanese architecture in the 1920s and 30s after Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel made the texture fashionable. The remaining walls are mortar finished with a brush-drawn surface. Neither material is what a rural merchant house of the Meiji period would have used, and the choice announces a business that wanted to look modern.
Inside, the two halves speak different languages. The office rooms are Western in plan and finish. The residence behind is Japanese, with tatami and sliding partitions. The family lived in one and traded in the other, separated by a few metres and about fifty years of stylistic distance. Buildings of this hybrid kind were common in provincial commercial districts, and are now uncommon, which is a large part of why this one was recorded.
The 1957 remodelling matters as well. Registration usually favours buildings that have kept their original state, but the Agency's own account presents this office as forming the streetscape of the postwar town centre. The alterations are read as part of the history rather than as damage to it.
A Tobacco House That Became a Brewery
Nakawa Shoten was founded in 1802 as a maker of kizami tabako, finely shredded tobacco smoked in small-bowled pipes. Ikeda was tobacco country; the crop grew on the terraces above the Yoshino River, and the town's merchant wealth came from processing and shipping it. When the state took the manufacture and sale of tobacco into monopoly in the Meiji period, that trade closed to private firms, and the third-generation head of the house, Nakamura Wa-emon, turned the business to sake. The company name compresses his own: Naka from Nakamura, wa from Wa-emon.
The date of that turn is recorded inconsistently. The company's own chronology gives 1904, the year the tobacco monopoly law took effect, while its greeting text and several other accounts give 1926. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the brewing hall, the brewers' lodging and the chimney to around 1926, which fits the later figure for the physical rebuilding of the site, and the mixing storehouse to the middle Meiji period, meaning that at least one tobacco-era structure was carried over into the new trade. Both dates are probably true of different things.
The house brand, Imakomachi, is named after Ima, the wife of the first Wa-emon, said to have been known locally for her looks. Brewing runs from late November to the end of March under a master brewer from Tajima in Hyōgo Prefecture, part of a long-standing pattern in which brewing crews travelled seasonally from Hyōgo to work elsewhere in Japan.
The office is a working office. There is no admission and no tour; what you can do is stand on Sugio-dōri and read the front, which takes about five minutes and is worth the walk from JR Awa-Ikeda Station, roughly 500 metres to the west. The brewery shop sells the sake on weekdays, and the compound opens properly one day a year, at the Shikoku Sake Festival in February. The 28th falls on 20 February 2027, with brewery openings from 11:00 to 15:00. Photograph the exterior freely from the road; ask before going through the gate.
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Q&A
- What kind of building is the Nakawa Shoten Office?
- It is a wooden structure of the late Taishō era, partly two storeys and partly single storey, with a floor area of 140 square metres and a roof of slate and tile. A two-storey office block, a single-storey wing and a residential range are linked in sequence.
- What is scratch tile, and where is it used on the Nakawa Shoten Office?
- Scratch tile is a ceramic cladding with a vertically combed surface, popular in Japan during the 1920s and 30s. It covers the ground floor of the street elevation; the rest of the walls are brush-finished mortar.
- Can the Nakawa Shoten Office be visited inside?
- No. It remains the working office and residence of the company, and there is no public admission. The exterior can be seen from Sugio-dōri at any time, and the compound opens during the Shikoku Sake Festival each February.
- Why is the company called Nakawa Shoten?
- The name combines syllables from Nakamura Wa-emon, the family head under whom the firm moved from tobacco into sake brewing. The business itself dates from 1802, when it made shredded tobacco.
- When was the Nakawa Shoten Office registered, and what else was registered with it?
- It was registered on 5 December 2019 as number 36-0201. The brewing hall, mixing storehouse, brewers' lodging and brick chimney on the same site were registered on the same day, numbers 36-0202 to 36-0205.
Basic Information
| Name | Nakawa Shoten Office (中和商店事務所) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1755 and adjacent, Sarada, Ikedachō, Miyoshi City, Tokushima Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building), No. 36-0201 |
| Year Designated | 5 December 2019 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Wood-framed, partly two storeys and partly one; slate roof with tile in part; floor area 140 m² |
| Owner | Nakawa Shoten G.K. |
| Public Access | Interior closed. Exterior visible from Sugio-dōri; compound opens during the Shikoku Sake Festival in February. |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Nakawa Shoten Office
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00013193
- Cultural Heritage Online: Nakawa Shoten Office
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/380507
- Nakawa Shoten G.K. official site: About the Brewery
- https://www.imakomachi.com/warehouse.php
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: Report on Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (Buildings), 19 July 2019
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/pdf/91972801_01.pdf
Last verified: 2026.08.02