Usukuchi Tatsuno Soy Sauce Museum

The Usukuchi Tatsuno Soy Sauce Museum is a food museum housed in a former factory that displays traditional equipment, production methods, and historical documents across multiple exhibition rooms. The collection includes ancient tools, fermentation chambers, and details about the techniques used to make this light-colored soy sauce variety.

The museum was established in 1979 and occupies a former factory building of Higashimaru Shoyu, a company that produced soy sauce for over 400 years. The site preserves the craft practices that developed over four centuries in this region.

The museum shows how soy sauce production became central to Japanese cooking by displaying the tools and methods that shaped local food culture over centuries. Walking through, you notice how this craft remains deeply connected to the region's identity.

The museum is housed in a converted factory building that is straightforward to navigate, with exhibition rooms on multiple levels. Plan enough time to move through the displays at a comfortable pace, as there are many details about production processes to discover.

The museum was the first in the world dedicated entirely to soy sauce production, making Tatsuno a hub for learning about this industry. Visitors often discover how specialized the techniques are that are required specifically for making the local light variety.