Mano Family Residence Storehouse

What Is the Mano Family Residence Storehouse?

The Mano Family Residence Storehouse (真野家住宅土蔵, Mano-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is a two-story earthen-walled storehouse built in 1894 at the rear of the Mano family compound at 57 Higashikoken, Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) in 2005. The family name is also written 眞野.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs places it behind the detached room, with its ridge running east to west. The Mano compound occupies the corner of the Honmachi intersection at the southern end of the Inuyama castle town; the main house stands on the street, a courtyard and the detached room follow behind it, and the storehouse comes last, at the very back of the plot, inside the high wall that closes the southern boundary. Its footprint of 121 square meters makes it the second-largest structure on the site after the main house at 219 square meters.

For a family in the money-lending business, the storehouse was where ledgers, deeds, and household valuables were kept. It was built in the same year, 1894, as the Mano Family Residence Main House, the Mano Family Residence Detached Room, and the Mano Family Residence High Wall, and all four were registered on the same day.

In 2025 the compound became the Shimohonmachi wing of the inn Shuku. The inn describes having converted "two large storehouses at the rear" into guest rooms, and the Mano Family Residence Storehouse appears to be one of them.

Why It Was Registered

The Mano Family Residence Storehouse was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency's entry is unusually frank: it calls the construction plain, and then locates the value elsewhere, in the building's large scale and in the imposing figure it presents seen over the high wall. This is a storehouse registered for its presence, not its ornament.

It is a Dozo-zukuri building, two stories high, with a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles. Inside, the long east-west volume is divided into two compartments, and each compartment has its own doorway on the south face with a small eave over it. One building, two independent stores: the family evidently wanted to keep different goods, or different people's access, apart.

The "plain" verdict is specific. On a typical Japanese storehouse the plaster of the walls is carried up under the eaves and built out in several stepped layers; here the eaves are finished with a single sloping coat. The doors and window shutters likewise lack the kakeko-nuri detail, the stepped plaster edges that interlock when the door closes to seal the joint against fire. The Mano storehouse was built as a serviceable store rather than a fortress.

Even so, a two-story storehouse of 121 square meters is large for a townhouse plot in Inuyama. The reason the Agency describes it as imposing over the wall is that the wall itself is 5 meters high, and the white upper wall and tiled roof of the storehouse still rise clear above it. Wall and storehouse together make the rear of the compound what it is.

A Registered Tangible Cultural Property is registered rather than designated. The system depends on owners continuing to use their buildings, and the Mano Family Residence Storehouse has changed its use from store to guest room within it.

What to Look For

From outside, the Mano Family Residence High Wall is your guide. Follow the 5-meter wall along the southern edge of the plot and look for a long white wall and a gabled tile roof showing above it: that is the storehouse. Because the ridge runs east to west, the long side of the roof faces south, toward you. The band of white you see over the wall is the storehouse's second story.

Only overnight guests enter the compound, but inside, the details recorded by the Agency can be checked one by one. Are there two doorways on the south face? The interior was split into two compartments, each with its own entrance. How are the eaves finished? A single sloping coat of plaster gives a cleaner, flatter line than the stepped eaves of a more elaborate storehouse. Are the door edges flat, without the stepped kakeko-nuri profile? On this building they should be.

The inn describes one of its converted storehouse rooms as a double-height space with a cypress bath, and notes that the thick plastered walls shut out sound from outside. The quiet made by a storehouse wall has not changed; it once protected account books and now protects a night's sleep. Public sources do not say how much of the interior fabric dates from 1894, so ask the inn if you want to tell original timber from renovation.

In front of the storehouse stands the Mano Family Residence Detached Room, and to the south runs the High Wall. The storehouse is "behind" the detached room in the Agency's words, and the view across the garden from the detached room's veranda to the storehouse wall is the compound's inner landscape.

Visiting and Access

The Mano Family Residence Storehouse is privately owned and is not open to the public as a cultural property. It now appears to serve as a guest room of the Shimohonmachi wing of the inn Shuku, so seeing the interior means staying the night. According to the inn, check-in runs from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and check-out is at 10:00 a.m.; the front desk is in the Neriya wing (the Kojima Family Residence) a few minutes' walk away. If you want a converted storehouse, specify a Shimohonmachi "kura" room when booking.

If you are not staying, the only way to see the storehouse is over the top of the High Wall from the public road along the south side of the plot. The Mano compound is on the corner of the Honmachi intersection; the storehouse is at the far eastern end of the plot. Walk east from the intersection and look for the southern boundary of the Mano property. Do not enter private land.

Photographing the exterior from the public road is fine. Inside the compound and the guest rooms, follow the inn's guidance.

The nearest station is Inuyama on the Meitetsu Inuyama Line, about 10 minutes on foot from the Mano compound along Honmachi-dōri and about 30 minutes by train from Meitetsu Nagoya Station. On the first Saturday and Sunday of April the Inuyama Festival closes the surrounding streets, and the inn asks guests not to come by car.