East Hiroshima · SaijoNo.1121★★Open in map →
Saijo Sakagura-dori
— Higashi-Hiroshima's street of sake breweries
Saijo is named with Nada and Fushimi as one of Japan's three great sake regions. Its breweries stand together on a single street south of the station, marked by red-brick chimneys and white plaster walls, and the walk begins at the ticket gate.
- FromHiroshima Station
- ~50 minJR train, ~40 min
- Get off atSaijo Station (JR Sanyo Line)
- On foot
- Saijo Sakagura-dori
The sweet spot
Saijo is not a hidden place. The sake festival weekend pulls visitors from across the country. But the breweries are working plants rather than attractions, so on an ordinary weekday the street goes back to its working face: delivery trucks, shutters half open, neighbours on bicycles. The calm is not obscurity. It is a town still at its job.
Where it is
25 more notes in Hiroshima · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Saijo Station south exitthe start of the walk, with the city tourist office on the station's upper floor
- The red-brick chimneyseach brewery's name set down the shaft in white, readable from the street
- The white and black brewery wallswhite plaster above, black namako lattice below, on long window-lined storehouses
- Kuguri-mon gatea gate near the middle of the street holding the Sakagura-dori tourist office and a coffee shop
- The brewing-water wellsnamed wells kept by the breweries, several opened for tasting the water
How to actually get there
- Hiroshima Station → Saijo Station (JR Sanyo Line, about 40 min).
- Saijo Station south exit → Sakagura-dori (a few minutes on foot, heading south).
- Walk east along Sakagura-dori as far as the tourist office in the Kuguri-mon gate.
- Return west along the same street to Saijo Station.
- JR Sanyo Line from Hiroshima Station
- Take the JR Sanyo Line from Hiroshima Station toward Shiraichi or Mihara and get off at Saijo. Hiroshima Prefecture's official tourism site puts the ride at about 40 minutes. Trains run through the day, so there is no need to plan around a timetable. The south exit already faces the brewery street.
- Back from Saijo Station
- Return on the JR Sanyo Line toward Hiroshima. Daytime service is frequent, but the gaps widen in the evening, so check the departure board if you stay on after the breweries close. Saijo has an overhead concourse, so either exit reaches the platforms.
About the place
The breweries of Saijo are not spread across the town. Seven of them stand on one street south of Saijo Station, close enough that their roofs read as a single block. Each marks itself with a red-brick chimney carrying its own name down the shaft in white lettering, so the skyline works as a signboard. Below the chimneys the walls repeat two tones: white plaster above, black namako lattice below, tiled roofs between. Behind them the ridges of the Kamo basin close the view. The street itself is older than the sake — it carried the Sanyo highway through here long before the first chimney went up.
How to enjoy it
Leave by the south exit, walk east along the street and turn back at the Kuguri-mon gate; one round trip covers the row. Brewing is winter work, so the cold months are when the buildings are busiest and the chimneys are doing something. In October the sake festival takes over the area around the station, and for that weekend the town wears a different face.
Background & history
The street was a highway before it was a brewery quarter. Laid out as the Sanyo highway between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it became the main street of a post town called Yokkaichi, with a rest house run directly by the Hiroshima domain. When the railway was pushed through the middle of the town in the mid-Meiji years, merchant houses along the old highway began brewing one after another, and the chimneys followed. In 2017 the Japanese national committee of ICOMOS placed the Saijo brewery buildings on its list of twenty pieces of Japan's twentieth-century heritage.
Before you go
- Cash
- Walking the street costs nothing. Tours, tastings and shops are run separately by each brewery, some free and some paid, so carry a little cash including coins. Several of the wells along the street are opened so you can taste the brewing water itself.
- Before you go
- The breweries are working plants and keep their own closed days for tours and shops. The street is open to the sky, with no arcade against rain or winter wind. On the sake-festival weekend the crowds on the street and around the station are nothing like an ordinary day.
- Another way
- By car, the Sanyo Expressway leaves at the Saijo interchange, and the city publishes a list of its municipal car parks. Arriving by Shinkansen, the nearest stop is Higashi-Hiroshima Station, but Saijo on the local line is far closer to the brewery street.
- After you get off
- Leave Saijo Station by the south exit and walk down the road in front of you. Within a couple of minutes it meets an east-west street: that is Sakagura-dori. Turn left and keep going to reach the Kuguri-mon gate and its tourist office.