Okumura Family Residence Rice Storehouse

The storehouse the inner gate points at

Okumura Family Residence Rice Storehouse (奥村家住宅米蔵, Okumurake Jūtaku Komegura) is a late-Edo grain storehouse at 395 Higashikoken in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture, registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 23 August 1999. It occupies the southern part of a long, narrow plot that runs back from the old highway, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to between 1830 and 1867, the same span as the Main House on the street front.

The building is a two-storey mud-walled storehouse, dozō-zukuri, with a tiled gable roof and a ridge running north to south. It measures five and a half ken along the ridge by three and a half ken across, a ken being roughly 1.8 metres, and covers 51 square metres. Among the nine registered structures on the Okumura plot, this is the largest of the storehouses.

Its single door opens on the west face, toward the northern end. That placement matters more than it sounds. The rice storehouse sits directly facing the munemon, the inner roofed gate through which the working part of the property was entered, so anyone passing the gate looks straight at this building.

Why the Rice Storehouse is on the register

Okumura Family Residence Rice Storehouse holds registration number 23-0027 and was accepted under the criterion covering structures that serve as a model of their type. That criterion is different from the one applied to the Main House and the safe storehouse, which were registered as difficult to reproduce. Here the assessment is about form: a late-Edo urban grain store of this size, still standing in its original position within an intact merchant compound, shows what the type looked like when it was built.

The Agency's record makes the compound argument explicitly. It describes the rice storehouse, together with the tool storehouse and the detached wing, as the principal components of the okumuki space at the centre of the site, the inner zone kept apart from the shopfront. The three buildings are read as a group. Remove one and the reading changes, which is part of why all nine structures went onto the register on the same day in 1999.

Unlike the Main House, this building is classified under housing rather than tertiary industry. Grain was the household's stored wealth rather than its trading stock, and the classification follows that distinction.

Reading the inner courtyard

Walk in through the munemon and stop. The axis running from the gate to the rice storehouse is the organising line of the whole rear half of the property, and everything else in the inner zone is placed in relation to it. The tool storehouse stands to the west, the detached wing beyond that, the barn tucked behind along the east wall.

The proportions repay attention. Five and a half ken by three and a half is a long rectangle, and with the ridge running north to south the storehouse presents a broad flank rather than a gable to anyone standing at the gate. Compare it with the tool storehouse immediately west, which is three ken square and enters through its gable end. Two storehouses, two different geometries, and the difference is functional: a grain store needs run length for sacks and access, a tool store needs compactness.

Its eaves also sit lower than the tool storehouse's. In the hierarchy of a merchant compound, the building holding the rice was the workhorse, not the showpiece, and the elevations record that ranking without saying anything about it.

Visiting Okumura Family Residence Rice Storehouse

The property is privately owned and used as a restaurant and event venue trading as French Okumuratei. The operator has converted this storehouse into a hall used for civil wedding ceremonies and gatherings, and describes the space, which it calls Ayanokura, as a former rice store within the compound. Access to the interior therefore depends on booking, and the building is regularly closed for private functions.

Because Okumura Family Residence Rice Storehouse stands in the inner part of the plot rather than on the street, it cannot be seen from the public road in the way the Main House and the safe storehouse can. This is the one building of the six covered here where a visit really does mean going in.

The operator publishes hours of 11:00 to 21:00 with Tuesday closure, trading when a Tuesday is a public holiday. Lunch bookings are preferred, dinner bookings required, and a telephone call in advance is advised. Details checked 30 August 2026.

Meitetsu Inuyama Station is about five minutes' walk to the west along the old road, and there is a car park at the Yosaka junction. Photography inside is a matter for the staff on the day, particularly since the room is used for ceremonies.