Horibe Family Residence Storehouse

Horibe Family Residence Storehouse: A Meiji Kura Built for a Silk-Raising Household

At the center of the Horibe grounds, set apart from the main house and the street wall, stands a thick-walled storehouse. Built in 1893 by Horibe Katsushiro a decade after his main house went up, this two-storey kura held what the household most needed to keep safe: tools, goods, and the products of the silk trade that had made the family's fortune.

The Horibe family had once served the Naruse lords of Inuyama Castle as retainers. When the samurai order gave way after the Meiji Restoration, Katsushiro turned to business and sericulture, and a fireproof storehouse was a natural part of the working compound he assembled. The master carpenter for the building was Hattori Ichinosuke.

Why It Is Registered

The storehouse was placed on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties in March 2006, one of six Horibe structures listed at once. Like its neighbors, it was recognized for its part in the historical landscape of the nation. A kura may look plain beside a formal reception room, yet it is exactly this kind of working building that tells you how a household actually lived and earned.

Its value lies in completeness. The main house, the street wall, the connecting corridor, the workshop, and this storehouse together preserve the full shape of a Meiji sericulture household in the Inuyama castle town. Read as a group, they show not just how the family received guests but how it stored, worked, and produced.

What to Look For

The building measures four and a half bays by two and a half, with a gabled, pantiled roof in the earthen-walled kura tradition. On the north side, two single-sliding doors give entry, sheltered by a tiled lean-to roof one bay deep. This modest porch is the first thing you notice, and it marks the working face of the storehouse.

The walls repay a close look. Over the plaster finish, battened weatherboarding rises to just below the eaves, a protective skin that shields the earthen wall from rain. This combination of white plaster and dark boarding is the classic armor of the Japanese kura, at once practical and quietly handsome. Inside, a partition set two bays in from the west divides the ground floor into two rooms.

Look up, if you can, at the roof structure. The frame uses raking beams that rise with the pitch of the roof rather than lying flat, a carpenter's solution that opens up the space beneath. Details like these are easy to miss, but they are where the skill of a Meiji storehouse builder shows most plainly.