Iinuma Honke Front Storehouse

A Small Storehouse That Completes the Compound

Iinuma Honke Front Storehouse is an early Meiji plaster-walled storehouse in the Umabashi district of Shisui, Chiba Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 27 October 2017.

It stands south-east of the main house and faces north. The building has 2 storeys in the Dozo-zukuri thick-plaster technique under a tiled roof, with a floor area of 28 square metres. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database dates it between 1868 and 1882 and records a remodelling between 1935 and 1944.

Its footprint is 3 bays along the ridge by 2 across. Iinuma Honke Front Storehouse is the smallest of the storehouses on the estate, and it was never a brewing store. According to the brewery, it held household goods as well as materials for the sake business.

Two Readings of Its Age

The date of Iinuma Honke Front Storehouse is disputed. The national database places it in the early Meiji period, while the owners, working from documents kept in the building, put it in the last years of the Edo period. This article follows the national record, which is the basis of the listing. The documents behind the family's estimate have not been published, so the question stays open.

The building was listed under the criterion for structures that contribute to the historic landscape. It qualifies as part of a compound rather than as a set piece: what matters is that it reads together with the main house and the annex, not that it is remarkable on its own.

What to Look For

Watch how the roof sits. Iinuma Honke Front Storehouse uses a gabled okiyane roof, a frame and covering built separately and set down on top of the thick plaster walls rather than tied into them. Keeping the two apart stops heat and damp from reaching the wall core. A pent canopy juts out over the front so that rain never strikes the plaster directly.

The outer wall is boarded to waist height and finished above in Shikkui lime plaster, with a projecting drip band, the hachimaki, running along the join. Because the wall changes material and colour horizontally, a small building avoids looking blank. Two windows open on the upper front.

Inside is a single undivided room with the posts left exposed in the Shinkabe manner, carrying a roof frame built from heavy bent timber. Against 28 square metres of floor, the scale of that framing feels excessive, and the mismatch is the most memorable thing about the building.

Visiting

Iinuma Honke Front Storehouse is a stop on the booked brewery tour, led by a member of the brewing staff. Book through the reservation page on the brewery's website or through the shop, Kinoene Magariya, on 043-496-1001. The tour is a paid programme and its dates are announced on the website.

Whether the group steps inside depends on the guide, so say in advance if you want to see the roof frame. Photography rules are not published anywhere on the brewery's site, and since visitors change into white coats before entering the brewing areas, it is worth asking about cameras when you book. Directions to the estate and opening hours are set out on the Iinuma Honke page.