Former Ito Limited Partnership Company Main Storehouse

A household storehouse on the canal

The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company Main Storehouse (旧伊東合資会社本土蔵, Kyū Itō Gōshi Gaisha Hondozō) is a late Edo period storehouse in Kamezaki, Handa City, Aichi Prefecture, registered as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property (building) on 31 October 2022. It stands on the western edge of the compound of the Ito family, brewers of the sake brand Shikishima, northwest of their reception wing, and held the household's goods and valuables.

The building is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri structure of earthen walls over a timber frame, with a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles entered on the long side in the Hirairi manner. It covers 76 square metres. The dating is roughly 1830 to 1868, which puts it alongside the core of the main house.

It matters that this is a household storehouse and not a brewing one. A brewer's compound normally carried several storehouses with different jobs, and the building that ferments sake, the one that holds rice and the one that keeps furniture and utensils each answer to different requirements. The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company Main Storehouse existed to protect family property, so resistance to fire and to damp came first.

A different registration criterion from the other two buildings

The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company Main Storehouse was registered under the criterion for buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. The main house and the reception wing, registered on the same day, were assessed under the criterion for models of design. The storehouse alone was valued for what it does to the look of the town. Its registration number is 23-0582.

The difference follows from where the building sits. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the storehouse presents clapboard walls along the canal and so completes the outward form of the compound. This is the building that draws the property's outline when you look at it from outside. The main house makes the southern face along the old highway; the storehouse makes a second face turned to the water on the west.

Kamezaki shipped its sake to Edo, and the canals were the arteries of that trade. Storehouses lined up facing the water are a survival from the period when cargo was transferred to boats. The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended all three buildings at its 240th subcommittee meeting on 22 July 2022, and the registration was gazetted on 31 October that year.

Wall finishes outside, timber inside

The lower part of the east front of the Former Ito Limited Partnership Company Main Storehouse is finished in Namako-kabe. Flat tiles are set across the wall and the joints between them are built up with plaster in rounded ridges, producing a raised lattice. The pattern looks decorative and was practical first: the tiles shield the earthen wall at the height where rain splashes hardest.

A lean-to roof projects over that east face, sheltering the Tomae, the framed entrance assembly of a storehouse. The doors here use the kakego technique, in which door and frame interlock in stepped rebates that are then plastered over, so that flames cannot find a gap during a fire.

The interior changes the impression. A transverse beam of 1 shaku 5 sun, about 45 centimetres, carries the upper floor, and free-standing zelkova columns of 1 shaku square, about 30 centimetres, rise clear of the walls. The columns are described as knot-free, which means timber cut near the heart of a large tree. Spending material of that grade on a storehouse for household goods says something plain about the wealth of the Ito family at the time.

Walk around to the canal side and the surface changes again, to horizontal clapboard. Where plaster stays white, boards weather grey. One building wearing a different finish on each face is the pleasure of looking at this storehouse.

Visiting

The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company Main Storehouse belongs to Sugita Co., Ltd., and as of August 2026 no schedule of interior openings is published by the owner or by Handa City. The building does stand on the western edge of the site facing the canal, so the boarded wall can be seen from the lane along the water. Of the three registered buildings this is the one whose exterior is easiest to study.

Photography from public ground is unproblematic. Stay off the private land and shoot upward from the canal lane. Bear in mind that the tiled lattice work is on the east front, which faces into the compound rather than out toward the water.

The nearest station is Kamezaki on the JR Taketoyo Line, about 15 minutes on foot or 3 minutes by taxi. From Nagoya Station, change at Ōbu onto the Taketoyo Line, or take a semi-rapid service bound for Taketoyo without changing. By car it is about 15 minutes from the Agui interchange on the Chita Peninsula Road.

The former brewery on the same block now houses a commercial complex whose shop opens Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00 (checked August 2026). It is run by a separate company, and visiting it does not give access to the inside of the storehouse.