Miyake Family Residence Storehouse

A Storehouse Behind a Merchant's House

The Miyake Family Residence Storehouse (Miyake-ke Jūtaku Kura) is a two-story earthen-walled storehouse in the Nishidaidō district of Owariasahi, a city wedged between Nagoya and the pottery town of Seto in Aichi Prefecture. It stands behind the main house, toward the western edge of a property that faces the old Seto Kaidō, the highway that once carried Seto's ceramics down toward Nagoya. The Agency for Cultural Affairs places the building in the early Meiji era, between 1868 and 1882; it was repaired in 2019.

The family that built it had deep roots here. From the mid-Edo period the Miyake were landowners holding fields around the former village of Arai. By the late Edo period they had taken up indigo dyeing, running a kōya, a workshop that colored cotton thread, and in the early Meiji years they added sake brewing. The residence went up as a working compound that combined dyeing and brewing under one roof. In the earthen floor of the main house, indigo vats still sit set into the ground, a quiet record of the trade. The storehouse described here was the family's dōgu-gura, the building where tools, equipment, and household valuables were kept.

A "Registered" Property, and Why That Matters

In 2022 the storehouse entered the national register of cultural properties, alongside the main house and the garden gate and wall, on February 17. The word to notice is "registered," not "designated." Japan runs two parallel systems. The older one, in place since before the war, designates National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties, a small and tightly controlled group of the country's finest works. The registration system, introduced in 1996, is lighter in touch. It was created for the much larger body of buildings, generally at least fifty years old, that give a place its character but might otherwise be lost to redevelopment. Owners register a structure and agree to consult before major changes; in return they keep living and working in the building while gaining modest support and recognition.

The storehouse was registered under the criterion that it contributes to the historic landscape of the country. That is the heart of its value. Not a famous architect, not a rare artwork inside, but the way it and its neighbors keep alive the look of a merchant settlement along the old highway. Group the three Miyake structures together and you have something uncommon in this part of Aichi: a near-complete merchant compound, gate through storehouse, that has stayed in place while the road around it modernized.

Reading the Building

Storehouses reward slow looking, and this one does so from the street. It is built in the dozō manner, a timber frame packed and rendered with thick earthen walls, a technique developed to resist fire and to hold a steady interior climate, exactly the qualities you want when guarding goods and valuables. The roof is a plain gable clad in sangawara, the interlocking pantiles that became standard once potters worked out how to make roof tile light and cheap. The entrance sits on the long eaves side, parallel to the ridge, sheltered by a small plastered pent roof.

Look higher. A raised band, the hachimaki or "headband," runs near the top of the wall like a cornice. The walls themselves are finished in mortar, the lower skirt painted black, a practical way to hide splashing and weather stains along the base. Inside, the ground floor is split into two rooms while the upper floor is a single space lit by a window on the west; the roof is framed with a heavy ushibari girder carrying squared timber rafters.

None of this is showy. The pleasure lies in recognizing a building type that once stood in every prosperous compound and now survives only here and there.

Around the Storehouse

A practical note first. The Miyake residence is a private home and is not open to the public. You can take in the storehouse and gate as part of the streetscape from the road, but the interior is reached only on rare occasions. The best of these is Aitate-Haku, the annual special-opening program run by Aichi's association of registered-property owners since 2014, when buildings that are normally closed open their doors with owners and specialists on hand to explain them. Check the program before a trip if seeing inside matters to you.

For a reliable day out, head into central Owariasahi. Shiroyama Park, about fifteen minutes on foot from Owariasahi Station on the Meitetsu Seto Line, holds the Asahi Castle building and the free Skyward Asahi observation tower, whose top floor opens a wide view over the plain. The Aichi Prefectural Forest Park lies a short way beyond. The Seto Line itself runs straight into central Nagoya in one direction and out to Seto in the other; Seto rewards the trip for its kilns and pottery museums, the very trade whose wares once moved down the road past the Miyake gate.