Taruhei Sake Brewery

A Sake House Older Than the Road Through It

Taruhei Sake Brewery (樽平酒造, Taruhei Shuzō) is a family sake brewery in Nakakomatsu, Kawanishi Town, Yamagata Prefecture, founded in the Genroku era (1688–1704); its main house, thought to date from around 1695, and six storehouses were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 5 November 1997.

The Inoue family has run the business from the start. According to the Yamagata Sake Brewers Association, the current president, Inoue Kyōshichi, is the twelfth generation. The house makes nothing but junmai sake, brewed from rice, water and koji alone, and is best known for two labels: Sumiyoshi, crisp and dry, and Taruhei, fuller and rounder. Its profile with the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association describes a stubbornly manual method: soaking tubs, rice steamers and warming barrels made of Yoshino cedar, and all of the koji turned by hand in shallow wooden trays. These are not museum buildings. The registered storehouses are where that work still happens.

Kawanishi sits in the southern part of the Okitama Basin, rice country with plenty of good water, and the town supported many breweries from the Edo period onward. Yamagata Prefecture's tourism site notes that only two remain in business. Taruhei is one of them.

Inoue Shōshichi, the tenth head of the family, assembled a collection of Chinese, Korean and Japanese ceramics, and in 1932 the family opened the Kikusui Kōgeikan museum across the road to show it. The office wing of the main house was remodelled in the same year. The premises later served as a filming location for the NHK television drama Kura.

Seven Buildings, Edo to Taishō

The seven registered buildings carry consecutive registration numbers, 06-0010 to 06-0016. Apart from the main house, all are Dozo-zukuri storehouses, thick earthen walls finished in white plaster, now roofed in sheet metal. Their footprints run between 79 square metres for the Front Storehouse and 428 square metres for the Middle Storehouse.

• Main House: around 1695, remodelled 1932; timber, 2 storeys, thatched; building area 430 square metres
• Middle Storehouse (Nakagura): mid-18th century; single storey; 428 square metres
• East Storehouse (Higashigura): early 19th century; single storey; 162 square metres
• West Storehouse (Nishigura): late Meiji period; single storey; 205 square metres
• Storehouse (Dozō): late Meiji period; 2 storeys; 85 square metres
• Front Storehouse (Maegura): Taishō era (1912–1926); 2 storeys; 79 square metres
• Barrel Storehouse (Tarugura): late Meiji period; 2 storeys; 142 square metres

Read as a sequence, the list shows a working business adding space when it needed it. The thatched house and the two oldest storehouses form the core; the Meiji and Taishō buildings fill in around them.

Two different registration criteria were applied. The Middle and West Storehouses were registered as buildings that set a standard of design, singled out by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as good examples of earthen-walled brewery architecture. The other five were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape, which here means the line of gables and plastered walls along the highway.

The main hall and Japanese hall of the Kikusui Kōgeikan, across the road, are also registered, and Kawanishi Town presents all nine as a single cluster.

Walking the Premises

A national highway runs straight through the property. The Main House and four storehouses stand on its west side; the Front Storehouse and Barrel Storehouse stand on the east, the Front Storehouse squarely opposite the Main House. The Agency's notes describe the Front Storehouse as preserving the look of the site before the road was rebuilt, and say that the Barrel Storehouse still reads as part of one continuous group even with a road now between it and the rest. In other words, the brewery was here first.

Start on the highway, facing the Main House. The two-storey office sits right at the street, and behind it rises the heavy thatch of the old farmhouse. Beside it the gable end of the East Storehouse meets the pavement, and the long flank of the Storehouse follows. Turn around and the white wall and deep eaves of the Front Storehouse are directly across the road.

That rhythm of triangular gables and blank white walls is what the Agency keeps coming back to; it calls the Main House and East Storehouse local landmarks. The two buildings registered for design, the long Middle Storehouse at the heart of the brewing operation and the windowless West Storehouse, sit further back and are hard to see from the street.

Visiting and Getting There

The exteriors can be seen at any time from the highway and the lanes around it. To go inside, book a brewery tour. The Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association lists tours on weekday afternoons only, by advance reservation, with tasting and sales available. Bookings and enquiries go to Taruhei Sake Brewery by telephone (0238-42-3101); ask about fees and which storehouses the tour covers when you call.

The nearest station is Uzen-Komatsu on the JR Yonesaka Line, about 20 minutes from Yonezawa, and the brewery is about 3 minutes from the station by car. Trains run roughly once every one to two hours, so check the JR East timetable before setting out. Drivers should allow about 30 minutes from Yonezawa-Chūō Interchange on the Tōhoku-Chūō Expressway via Route 287. There is parking.

The Kikusui Kōgeikan can be visited on the same trip. Cross the highway from the front of the Main House and it is right there, beside the Front and Barrel Storehouses.