Satataki Bunko Collection

The Oldest Building on the Plot

Sataki Bunko-gura (佐滝文庫蔵, さたきぶんこぐら, the Sataki document storehouse) is a two-storey clay-walled storehouse at Yokamachi 49 in Sannohe Town, Aomori Prefecture, completed in 1893 (Meiji 26) and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 15 February 2000. It is the earliest surviving structure on the Sato family plot.

The date is not an estimate. An ink inscription (墨書, bokusho) written on the timber during construction records completion in the third month of Meiji 26, and that inscription is why the Agency for Cultural Affairs states the year without qualification. Japanese carpenters and plasterers commonly signed and dated their work on members that would be hidden once the building was finished. Two centuries of such inscriptions have given architectural historians a precision that documentary records alone rarely provide.

Sato Takijiro had opened his sundries business at Yokamachi seven years earlier, in 1886. A merchant house of that period needed somewhere to keep ledgers, deeds, contracts and the stock that mattered most. A bunko-gura is exactly that: a storehouse for documents and valuables, distinct in function from the larger goods storehouse that a prosperous firm would add later. Building one in 1893 was a statement that the business intended to last.

Small, and Difficult to Reproduce

The building covers 35 square metres of ground area. Its construction is dozo-zukuri, the traditional Japanese storehouse method in which a timber frame is packed with thick layers of clay and finished in lime plaster, producing walls that resist fire, damp and temperature swings. The roof is gabled (kirizuma) and covered in sheet iron. The plaster is finished in black.

Black plaster (kuro-shikkui) is a demanding finish. It is made by working carbon black and other pigments into the final lime coat, then polishing the surface, and any unevenness of colour or trowel pressure shows permanently. On a small building there is nowhere for a mistake to hide.

The registration criterion recorded for Sataki Bunko-gura is that it is difficult to reproduce (再現することが容易でないもの). Registered properties are entered under one of three criteria, and this one is applied to buildings whose materials, techniques or craftsmanship could not readily be recreated today. It is a different judgement from the one applied to Sataki Honten across the plot, which was registered as a model of design.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out two areas of workmanship: the treatment around the eaves, and the doors.

The Doors, and Why They Look Like That

The front entrance carries a pair of kannon-biraki doors, hinged at the sides and opening outward from the centre. Sannohe Town's description adds the significant detail that these doors have a jabara profile.

Jabara translates loosely as bellows, and on a storehouse door it means a stepped, interlocking edge. The door and its frame are each cut in a series of concentric rebates so that when the door closes, the steps nest inside one another. There is no straight gap running from outside to inside. In a fire, flame and smoke would have to negotiate a labyrinth rather than a slot.

Cutting those steps accurately in thick timber, then plastering over them so that the layers still close cleanly, is the sort of work that makes a plasterer's reputation. On a small building it is also the first thing a visitor notices, because the door face is at eye level and the shadow lines of the steps catch the light.

Look up from there to the eaves. The underside of a plastered storehouse eave is one of the hardest surfaces in Japanese building to finish well, because the plaster is worked overhead against gravity while maintaining a crisp line. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record notes the quality here specifically.

Sataki Bunko-gura also predates the 1923 Sannohe fire that destroyed the family's shop by thirty years, and it is still standing. Fire resistance was the reason storehouses were built this way, and this one was tested.

Visiting the Sato Family Buildings

Aomori Prefecture records the public access status of Sataki Bunko-gura as closed to the public (非公開). The storehouse stands on private land behind the shop building, and Sannohe Town asks anyone wishing to see the Sato family buildings to contact the Board of Education in advance on 0179-20-1157. Do not expect to walk in. The building can generally be understood from the plot layout as described in town materials rather than at close range.

Sataki Honten, the shop that faces the street on the same plot, is listed as open by the prefecture, and arrangements for the group as a whole go through the same town office. Photography arrangements are not published; ask when you make contact.

The nearest station is Sannohe on the Aoimori Railway, which is actually in neighbouring Nanbu Town and about ten minutes by car from the Yokamachi commercial street. A taxi firm operates from Yokamachi 54-3. Sannohe Town runs a community bus at a flat 100 yen fare. From the Tohoku Expressway, the Hachinohe interchange is about fifty minutes away by road.