Former Nara Family Residence Zashiki-Gura

A storehouse with a formal room inside

Most storehouses hold goods. This one holds a room. Built in 1890 (Meiji 23), the zashiki-gura of the former Nara residence is a two-story earthen-walled storehouse that carries an eight-mat tatami reception room on its upper floor. It stands just west of the miso storehouse on the estate at Kanaashi Koizumi in northern Akita City, set on an east–west axis with its ridge running the length of the building.

The plan makes the dual purpose plain. On the ground floor a one-ken antechamber opens into a broad hall; upstairs, a wider antechamber of two and a half ken leads to the eight-mat zashiki and an adjoining board-floored room. A storehouse that also received guests is not a contradiction here but a statement of means: the Nara, among the foremost farming families in Akita, could afford to finish a utilitarian building to the standard of a guest room.

Reading the walls

The building is roughly 114 square meters, seven ken along the front by three and a half deep, with lean-to porches at both gable ends. The exterior is white lime plaster, and along the base runs a course of cut stone (kiriishi) set as a skirt. The doorway is placed on the east gable, sheltered by its own lean-to. Above, a separate "placed roof" (okiyane) of copper sheet covers the whole in a gabled form.

These are the marks of a storehouse built to last and to impress. Cut-stone bases resist damp and give the plastered box a crisp footing; the copper roof, laid over the earthen structure as a distinct outer shell, protected the walls beneath. When the estate's seven annexes were entered on the national register in 2006, the citation valued their contribution to the historic landscape, and the zashiki-gura shows why: it is at once a working storehouse and a piece of domestic display.

What to look for on a visit

The former Nara residence is open as an annex of the Akita Prefectural Museum, with free admission. The main house, a farmhouse of the 1750s and an Important Cultural Property, anchors the site; the annexes fan out around it. At the zashiki-gura, follow the line where white plaster meets the cut-stone base, then note how the doorway tucks under its lean-to on the east gable. Reading the two floors in sequence, the plain lower hall and the finished reception room above, makes the building's double life legible. Museum staff interpret the grounds, and the whole complex of protected outbuildings can be walked in a single visit.