Former Imai Family Residence Storehouse

An 1892 Storehouse at the Heart of the Plot

The Former Imai Family Residence Storehouse (旧今井家住宅土蔵, Kyū Imai-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is an earth-walled storehouse built in 1892 in Shinmachi, Sakura City, Chiba Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on December 5, 2019. It belonged to the Imai family, kimono merchants who traded as Surugaya, and stands halfway along their long, narrow plot, its ridge running north to south.

The Former Imai Family Residence Storehouse is a 2-storey building in the Dozo-zukuri fireproof style, with a tiled roof and a building area of 27 square metres. Sakura City’s plan gives the floor areas as 21.73 square metres downstairs and 19.79 square metres upstairs. It was repaired in 2011. Of the three registered buildings here, it is the only one whose year of construction is known.

Why It Was Registered

The storehouse was registered as a building that contributes to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs praises the careful kakegonuri finish on its earthen shutters as evidence of skilled plastering, and notes that its ridge-end tiles show a regional characteristic.

For a merchant family, a storehouse like this was insurance against fire, the place where stock and household valuables were kept behind thick clay walls. With the shop at the front and the reception rooms in between, it completes the layout of a castle-town merchant’s property.

What to Look For

The storehouse is entered on its gable end (Tsumairi), with a lean-to roof, or Geya, sheltering the doorway on the south front. On the upper floor, small roofed windows face both front and back, each closed by a pair of hinged earthen shutters, or Tsuchido.

Those shutters are the thing to study. Their edges and frames are finished in Kakegonuri, a technique in which the plaster is built up in stepped ridges so that the steps of the shutter and the frame lock together when closed, sealing the gap against fire. How crisply those stepped lines run is the measure of the plasterer’s skill.

Then look up at the roof. Behind each Onigawara ridge-end tile, plaster has been heaped up into a raised backing called kagemori, which makes the tile look larger and heavier. The official description treats this as a regional feature of the building.

Visiting

The Former Imai Family Residence Storehouse stands in the middle of the plot, behind the main house and the parlor wing as seen from Shinmachi Street. No interior viewing is advertised, and there are no separate viewing days or admission fees.

The property has been used as a restaurant since February 2026. Whether diners can see the storehouse from inside the grounds is a question for the staff.