Tatsuno City
Usukuchi (Light Colored) Tatsuno Soysauce Museum


Tangible Folk Cultural Property Designated by the Hyogo Prefectural Government
Modern Times

There is a soysauce factory cluster in the Kawanishi district of Tatsuno city which has a traditional atmosphere peculiar to Tatsuno. Some of the buildings in this district have been made into the Soysauce Museum. It consists of restored factory and office buildings which belonged to the Higashimaru Shoyu Company. The factory part was restored in 1976. Tools and apparatus for making soysauce which are displayed in the museum belong to various companies of the Tatsuno Soysauce Cooperative.
In the museum, there is a series of displays showing in sequence the procedures for producing soysauce. The first display shows processing of raw ingredients (for example, simmering soybeans). The next display shows roasting of wheat. In a place called koji-muro, a kind of fungi called tane-koji is put in a mixture of simmered soybeans and roasted wheat to grow koji. The koji-muro has a double brick wall structure and a ceiling with a rotatable aperture for temperature adjustment. A mixture of the koji and salt water is stored in wooden tubs to ferment and mature in a place called shikomi-gura. The northern building contains a place for making wooden tubs, and a place called funaba, where bags of the matured koji are squeezed to get the soysauce, shoyu.
The tools and apparatus displayed in the museum were actually used by the soysauce companies from the Edo Period (1600-1868) to the beginning of the Showa Period (1926-1989), and are considered to be precious cultural artifacts. As a place where you can see the buildings and the procedures for making soysauce, this site is very unique.

Source: The Tatsuno municipal government

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