Masaaki Komai Family Storehouse

A 1916 Storehouse on a Kanaya Roadside

Komai Seitoku Family Residence Storehouse (駒井正篤家住宅土蔵, Komai Seitoku-ke Jutaku Dozo) stands at Kanaya Nakamatsumoto in Hirakawa City, Aomori Prefecture, was built in 1916, and was entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties in December 2005. It remains in private ownership, on the grounds of a working household.

The building sits at the northern edge of the property, directly on the road. It is a two-storey dozo, an earthen-walled storehouse, three bays along the ridge and two and a half bays deep, with its entrance on the long eaves side. A bay, or ken, measures roughly 1.8 metres. The recorded floor area is 33 square metres. Walls are finished in white lime plaster; the lower band is artificial stone worked into a hexagonal tortoiseshell pattern. The forecourt on the south side is enclosed by a wall.

The roof deserves a note. It is an okiyane, a "placed roof": a separate timber frame carrying sheet iron, set over the earthen structure rather than built into it. The gap between roof and mud wall lets damp escape and keeps rain and snow off the plaster. In the Tsugaru region, where winter snowfall is heavy, the arrangement earns its keep, and most of the storehouses around Kanaya use it.

Apples, Rivalry and the Plasterer's Hand

The registration criterion applied here is contribution to the historic character of the national landscape. That phrasing points outward. This storehouse was assessed less as an isolated building than as one member of a group, and the group is the point.

Hirakawa City Tourism Association reports that 334 storehouses survive in the Onoe area, the former town of Onoe, that 94 per cent of them belong to farming households, and that 78 cluster in the Kanaya district alone, 39 of which hold national registration. Other sources give roughly 300 storehouses and 40 registrations. The figures move; the density does not.

The explanation lies in fruit. Hirakawa City records that apple cultivation raised farm incomes from the Meiji period onward, and that households competed to build storehouses as visible proof of prosperity. Rice had long made the plain wealthy. Apples turned that wealth into white walls.

Competition showed up in the detailing. On the north face of the upper storey, the window surround carries a kote-e, an arabesque worked in relief. Kote-e is made on site by a plasterer building up wet lime with the tip of a trowel, no mould involved, so no two are identical. Beneath the eaves runs a hachimaki, a projecting plaster band, here finished in black lime. The hexagonal pattern in the artificial stone at the base belongs to the same instinct: a surface that could simply have been rendered flat was given a figure instead.

One date needs care. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records registration on 26 December 2005 with public notice the following day, while the Aomori Prefectural Board of Education lists 27 December as the registration date.

Seeing It

Start with the constraint: this storehouse is not open to the public. It stands on private residential land, and visitors cannot enter the grounds. The Aomori Prefectural Board of Education records its status as closed, with viewing arranged only by application to the NPO Onoe Kura Preservation and Utilisation Promotion Association. Enquiries go through that organisation and the Hirakawa City Board of Education's local history museum. Turning up unannounced is not an option.

Because the building faces the road, the exterior can be seen from public space. Keep photography to the roadway and leave the household undisturbed. Kanaya is a lived-in farming settlement, not an open-air museum.

Once a year the district holds a single-night illumination of its farm storehouses, with paper lanterns set along the walls. Late January is the usual timing, and snow against white plaster is the reason people come. Dates shift annually, so confirm with the Hirakawa City Tourism Association before planning around it.

Getting there realistically means a car. The nearest railway station, Tsugaru-Onoe on the Konan Railway's Konan Line, sits more than half an hour's walk from Kanaya Nakamatsumoto. That station has its own draw, a shrine-style timber building, and Sarugajinja shrine and the celebrated Seibien garden are both within a short walk of it, which makes a combined half-day route straightforward to plan.