Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse

What the Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse Is

Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse (中濱家住宅土蔵, Nakahama-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is a Meiji-period storehouse in Arimatsu, Midori Ward, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2008. It stands with its gable end turned toward the old Tōkaidō highway, forming a single frontage with the main house immediately to its east. Its register number is 23-0279, and the entry covers 1 building.

The building measures 7.3 meters along the ridge by 4.5 meters across, with a floor area of 33 square meters over two storeys and a Sangawara-buki roof. Construction is Dozo-zukuri: a timber frame packed and plastered over with thick earthen walls. As town storehouses go this one is modest in size, yet almost every refinement available to the type has been applied to the face that meets the street.

Arimatsu was laid out in 1608 by the Owari domain on the stretch of the Tōkaidō between the post towns of Narumi and Chiryū. There was little farmland, so tie-dyeing was developed as a souvenir trade for travellers passing through. The Meiji period, when Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse was built, was the era in which the dyers' trade recovered from the collapse of highway traffic after the Meiji Restoration by renewing its patterns and shifting into wholesale.

Why It Was Registered

Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse was listed under the criterion covering buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. The main house on the same plot was listed under a different criterion, the one for buildings that set a standard of design, so the two entries recognise different things. Along roughly 800 meters of gently curving old highway, wide-fronted dyers' houses alternate with gates and fences, and this storehouse punctuates that run of walls at the point where the main house ends.

A storehouse facing the street is not unusual in Arimatsu. A fire in 1784 destroyed most of the village, and during the twenty years of rebuilding, supported by the Owari domain, plastered fireproof walling and fire-break parapets became standard here. Placing a Dozo-zukuri box at the street edge protected the stock inside and slowed the spread of flames to the neighbours at the same time.

The Arimatsu townscape was selected in 2016 as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. It was the first highway townscape inside a major city to receive that status, and the second along the Tōkaidō after Seki-juku in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture. Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse stands inside the selected area.

What to Look For

The colour registers first. The outer walls of Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse are finished in black lime plaster. White storehouses are the norm across much of Japan, but in Arimatsu the upper storey is commonly plastered black, and this building keeps to the local key.

The lower band of wall has a washed finish with cut joints. The surface was washed back while still green to expose the aggregate, then scored with straight joint lines. From across the road it reads as a pale plinth holding up the black; up close the grain of the gravel and the ruled lines come into view together.

Both floors open a Tomae toward the street, each hung with a kakego-nuri door. These doors and their frames are cut with interlocking rebates, so that closing one seals the gap against fire and smoke. The presence of the same door on the upper floor shows that goods were hoisted to that level and stored there.

Above each opening a heavy Sangawara-buki canopy projects, deep enough to stand under in rain. Seen head on, Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse resolves into three horizontal bands: black wall, pale plinth, tiled canopy. Set beside the wooden lattice of the main house, those bands do much of the work of the street elevation.

Visiting

Nakahama Family Residence Storehouse is privately owned and the interior is not open. The exterior can be seen at any hour from the public road along the old Tōkaidō. There is no admission charge and no fixed viewing hours.

The nearest station is Arimatsu on the Meitetsu Nagoya Main Line, about a 5-minute walk away. Walk south from the station to the old highway, then turn west; the gable-fronted storehouse appears immediately west of the main house. The railway reached Arimatsu in 1917, more than twenty years after the storehouse was built.

Photography from the public road is fine. Stepping onto the plot or approaching the doors means entering someone's home, so keep to the road. The main house operates as a shibori shop, but its opening days and hours change from season to season, so check before you go if you want to see inside it.