Kisogawa River Museum Storage Room (former Kisogawa Town

A Warehouse in Traditional Dress

North of the old council hall in Ichinomiya stands a smaller building that is easy to pass without a glance and rewards a second one. Around 1924 the town of Kisogawa raised it as a storehouse for the town office, and since 2006 it has held the collection of the Kisogawa Museum under the name Kisogawa Museum Storage Room, once the Kisogawa Town Office Warehouse.

Seen from the lane it reads as a plain two-story white storehouse, gabled and sub-tile roofed, its ridge running east to west, covering only about 41 square meters. The interest is in how it was built. Its columns and walls are reinforced concrete, a material still uncommon in small-town Japan in the early 1920s, while the roof above is carried on a wooden king-post truss.

The name, like that of its neighbor, points to the former town of Kisogawa rather than to the Kiso River that gave the town its name.

Why It Is Protected

The building joined the national register of tangible cultural properties on August 3, 2006, as registration number 23-0221. It was recognized as a clear case of a traditional form produced by modern methods.

Every visible detail points back to the older storehouse type, the dozo. White mortar covers the walls, a cornice runs beneath the eaves, iron-plated doors close the openings, and small canopies shelter the doorway and windows. Yet the wall doing the work is concrete rather than thick packed earth. For a store of town records the reason was fire. Concrete offered the documents inside a protection that timber and earthen walls could not promise, and it did so while keeping the familiar face of a plastered storehouse.

What to Look For

The building now serves as the museum's collection store, so visitors normally see it from the outside, which is where its character sits. Trace how the white walls, the cornice line and the little canopy eaves reproduce the grammar of a dozo in a material that is not earth at all. Then notice the difference in silhouette from its neighbor: the storehouse is gabled and set east to west, while the former council hall beside it is hipped and laid out north to south.

The main building next door, the former council chamber, is the museum's exhibition space and is free to enter. Together the two make a compact lesson in how a small Japanese town handled public building in the 1920s, one in wood for assembly and display, the other in concrete for safe keeping.

The site is about three minutes on foot from Shin-Kisogawa Station on the Meitetsu Nagoya Main Line. Opening days can be limited, so check with the city of Ichinomiya before setting out.