Seigyoku Sake Brewery

Seigyoku Sake Brewery

Seigyoku Sake Brewery (勢玉, read Seigyoku) is a sake brewery in Fukushima, Tokushima City, Tokushima Prefecture, whose two storehouses and chimney of about 1902 and early Showa office building, four structures in all, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 23, 1999 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). All four belong to Seigyoku Co., Ltd.

According to the Agency, Seigyoku was founded in 1902 by a local man named 勢井種蔵, and the two storehouses and the chimney date from the founding. Tokushima City's official tourism site, however, gives the founding year as 1894, eight years earlier. This page and the pages for each building follow the Agency's record and date the buildings to about 1902.

The Site and Its Four Structures

The Seigyoku Sake Brewery site has roads along both its east and west sides (Agency for Cultural Affairs). In the south-east corner stands Storehouse A, a large two-storey earthen-walled storehouse with its gable end to the road. Storehouse B, single-storey, continues to the north and shows its long side to the east road.

Facing the west road is the office building, a two-storey Machiya townhouse. The Agency places it west of Storehouse A, with the brick chimney north-east of the office. Two Meiji storehouses, a chimney and an early Showa townhouse thus share one site.

All four were registered as structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the nation, with consecutive registration numbers 36-0018 to 36-0021 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Each building is described on its own page.

A Brewery That Came Through the War

In its note on the office building, the Agency records that fires during the Second World War destroyed many of the timber buildings in the Fukushima district. Seigyoku Sake Brewery keeps its founding-era storehouses and chimney there, together with an early Showa townhouse.

Brewing goes on. Tokushima City's official tourism site says the old storehouses have been converted inside into a dining room, a hall called Rakushingura, a small museum and a sake shop, and that Seigyoku sake is now made in the brewing building next door. A feature on the same site, current as of March 2020, describes Seigyoku as a very small producer that collects sake as it seeps naturally from cloth bags, an old method of pressing.

Visiting

Seigyoku Sake Brewery is in Fukushima 1-chome, about 1.1 kilometres east of JR Tokushima Station in a straight line. Tokushima City's official tourism site puts it 5 minutes by car from Tokushima Station and lists parking for 40 cars.

The site's shop listing gives opening hours of 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with the sake shop open from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Sundays, and closing days of January 1 and 2. The March 2020 feature, however, gives Thursday as the regular closing day, so it is worth checking with the brewery before you go.

The same feature says the brewing storehouse is not open inside, while the shop listing says the storehouse interiors now hold the shop and museum. Official sources do not make clear how far visitors may go, or which of the four registered structures each use occupies, and no official guidance on photography was found. From the east and west roads you can see the gable end of Storehouse A, the long side of Storehouse B and the front of the office building.