Former Araya National Warehouses

Former Araya National Warehouses: Eight Rice Stores by the Omono River

The Former Araya National Warehouses (旧国立新屋倉庫) are eight single-storey timber rice warehouses built in 1934 in Araya Okawacho, Akita City, Akita Prefecture, and entered together on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2000.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that the warehouses were built near the mouth of the Omono River by the former Akita Prefecture federation of sales and purchasing cooperatives, on ground reclaimed with spoil from river improvement works carried out from 1917 to 1938. In 1939 they were donated to the government, becoming the Araya National Warehouses, and were used to regulate the rice supply until 1990.

According to Akita City, Akita and the port town of Tsuchizaki also bid for the national warehouse, but Araya won because rice already reached it by water. Akita University of Art and Design notes that the eight together could hold about 30 percent of the rice consumed in Akita Prefecture in a year.

The Buildings

The eight gabled buildings run east to west and stand in a north-south row, eaves almost touching. The Agency gives each the same size, 45 metres long and 15 metres wide, with mortar-rendered walls, entrances in the gable ends and a raised ventilation roof along the ridge. The university describes each as 14.3 metres wide and 45 metres deep, rising to 8.5 metres at the highest point of the ceiling.

Entrance canopies line the west side, and on the east a continuous canopy once formed the platform for a railway siding, which Akita City says ran from Araya Station. Inside, each building was originally split into two rooms, east and west, with two rows of posts down the middle as an aisle. The roof frame combines a Japanese-style truss braced with struts between the central posts and triangular Howe trusses on either side, a hybrid the Agency calls an original solution to the long spans.

Outside, the buildings recall traditional earthen storehouses, with a separate outer roof raised over the structural one for insulation. The eight registrations are numbered 05-0057 to 05-0064, all under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and according to the university the group was also listed as part of Akita Prefecture's modern industrial heritage in 1992.

From Rice Store to Campus and Library

The university says that after the warehouses were decommissioned in March 1990, the Araya community and many residents called for them to be kept and reused. In 1991 a plan emerged to use them as a new junior college, and in February 1994 their transfer to Akita City as a college site was agreed.

From April 1995 they housed the Akita Municipal Junior College of Arts and Crafts, and since April 2013 they have formed part of the campus of Akita University of Art and Design. Today the university uses the seven northern buildings as Atelier Momosada, and the southernmost is part of the Araya Library. Conversion added windows in the gable and side walls and linked the ventilation roofs into one, but the original character survives well.

Visiting

The easiest building to enter is the Araya Library at the southern end. It opens from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays (children of elementary school age and younger until 5 p.m.) and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at weekends and on holidays. It closes on Mondays (or the next day if Monday is a holiday), on the last day of each month, from 29 December to 4 January and for an annual stocktaking period. The address is 12-26 Araya Okawacho, telephone 018-828-4215.

No official information was found on visiting the interiors of the seven university buildings, so check with Akita University of Art and Design before going. Akita City says the warehouses are about 15 minutes on foot from Araya Station on the JR Uetsu Line.