Shimozato Family Residence (Chiyokura Main House) Momiji Storehouse

A black-walled storehouse on the old Tokaido highway

Shimozato Family Residence (Chiyokura Main House) Momiji Storehouse (下郷家住宅（千代倉本家）紅葉蔵, Shimozato-ke Jūtaku Momijikura) is an 1891 earthen-walled storehouse in Narumi-cho, Midori Ward, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 15 August 2024.

The building is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri structure with a Kirizuma-zukuri roof covered in Hongawarabuki tiles, the heavy formal tiling of temples and high-status town buildings. A lower pent roof, tiled in lighter pan tiles, runs along the east face. The footprint measures 91 square meters. What catches the eye first is the colour: the plaster is black, not the white that most Japanese storehouses wear, and the lower part of each wall is clad in horizontal boarding.

Chiyokura is the trade name attached to the Shimozato family, merchants of Narumi. Nagoya's official tourism site describes the Shimozato Chiyokura main house as a merchant family of roughly four hundred years' standing. Narumi was a post station on the Tokaido, the highway that linked Edo with Kyoto, and the compound sits in what was the centre of that post town. Momiji Storehouse occupies the southwest corner of the site, with a second storehouse joined to its north side under a slightly lower roof.

Readers who look the property up will meet two readings of the family name. The Council for Cultural Affairs report of 15 March 2024 gives Shimozato; the Agency for Cultural Affairs database entry for this building gives Shimosato, while its entry for the neighbouring storehouse gives Shimozato. This article follows the council report.

Why the building was registered

Momiji Storehouse is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, entered on the national register on 15 August 2024 under register number 23-0607. The criterion applied to it covers structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Registration is the lighter of Japan's two heritage systems: it records a building, asks the owner to give notice before substantial alteration, and lets the structure stay in use rather than freezing it.

The council report treats this building and its neighbour as a pair, describing them as two household storehouses of a merchant compound in the centre of the Narumi post station, and concluding that their solid exteriors together shape the appearance of the site. The value recognised here is not the rarity of a single structure. It is what two Meiji-period storehouses still do to a streetscape that has otherwise been rebuilt many times over.

The Shimozato family's standing in Narumi long predates the building. Records compiled by Midori Ward note that Seigan-ji, the family temple of the Chiyokura house, holds the Shimozato graves and a mound commemorating local haiku poets, and that its gate was moved there from the family residence in the time of the fourth head of the house. Momiji Storehouse is what such a family built once the Meiji era was under way, and it has stayed in the family's hands: the registered owner is Chiyokura Co., Ltd.

What to look for

The combination of black plaster and formal tiling is unusual enough to repay a slow look. Hongawara tiling, laid in alternating broad pans and rounded covers, is markedly heavier than the pan tiles used on ordinary town buildings, and a frame stout enough to carry it had to be built first. Add walls plastered thick against fire and damp, and boarding to protect the base from splash, and the exterior reads as a list of the things a merchant wanted from a strongroom.

The pent roof along the east side is tiled more lightly, in Sangawara-buki. This was the working face of the building, where goods went in and out, and the roof gave shelter to anyone standing at the doors in the rain. Two bays at its southern end carry glazed doors that continue into the neighbouring storehouse, so the two east elevations read as a single run rather than as two separate buildings.

Upstairs, a household shrine shelf stands against the north wall. The Agency for Cultural Affairs pairs this detail with the room's timber frame: a thick horizontal beam at the base of the roof structure, with rafter beams climbing from it toward the ridge, all of it left open to view rather than hidden above a ceiling. Anyone who has only seen storehouses from outside tends to picture a dark box; the framing here was meant to be seen by the people who used the room.

As for the contents, the national database records this as the storehouse for the household's furnishings and documents. The adjoining Chiyokura Rekishikan shows those holdings in rotating exhibitions, including material connected to the poet Matsuo Basho and the painter Ike no Taiga, both of whom the family knew. A stone marker in Narumi raised in 1687 carries the names of six local poets, one of them a head of this house writing under the name Chisoku. A family that kept paper for that long needed somewhere dry to keep it.

Visiting

Momiji Storehouse is closed to the public. Nagoya's official tourism site states plainly that the registered storehouses beside the museum are not open, and the compound is private property, so visitors should follow the museum's instructions about access and photography rather than assume either is permitted.

The adjoining Chiyokura Rekishikan opens during its four exhibition periods each year, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with last entry at 4:00 p.m. It closes Monday through Wednesday, public holidays included, and shuts entirely between exhibitions while displays are changed. Checking the current exhibition dates before travelling is the difference between a visit and a locked door.

Admission is 500 yen for adults, 300 yen for high school and university students, 100 yen for elementary and junior high school students, and free for pre-school children. Credit cards, transport IC cards and QR code payments are accepted. There is no car park.

The nearest station is Narumi on the Meitetsu Nagoya Main Line, about four minutes on foot from the east exit. The old Tokaido runs east of the station, and a walk along it takes in a reconstructed notice board site, Seigan-ji and the Amatsukami shrine, all within the former post town. Seeing this compound works best as one stop on that walk rather than as a destination in itself.