Nakamura Family Residence North Storehouse and Office

What the Nakamura Family Residence North Storehouse and Office Is

The Nakamura Family Residence North Storehouse and Office (中村家住宅北蔵及び事務所, Nakamura-ke jūtaku kitagura oyobi jimusho) is a single building joining a late Taisho storehouse and an early Showa office, standing east of the main house on the Nakamura estate in Onikoshi, Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, and registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 7 October 2014. It is a 2-storey timber building roofed partly in tile and partly in sheet metal, with a building area of 55 square metres.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the western half is the 2-storey timber north storehouse, and the office is attached to its southwest side. The storehouse was clad in sheet iron from the start and has windows in both gable ends. The office is Western in style: its walls are finished in Araidashi washed aggregate scored with false joints to look like masonry, with a cornice along the top and arches over the windows.

Of the two gates in the north wall of the estate, the carriage gate toward the east stands beside this office. The main gate toward the west leads to the family's main house, so the office faced the business entrance.

Why It Was Registered

The Nakamura Family Residence North Storehouse and Office was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Chiba Prefectural Board of Education picks out the office as a Western-style building whose washed-aggregate walls are given false joints to resemble stone.

Its value lies in recording, in built form, the Nakamura business after it turned to brewing miso. The storehouse is late Taisho and the office early Showa, both newer than the late Meiji buildings that make up most of the estate. The dates show a Western-style office being added once the family's trade had shifted to brewing.

Dressing a timber building to look like stone was a common device for shops and offices of the early Showa years. Araidashi is made by spreading mortar mixed with fine gravel and washing the surface before it fully sets so the stones stand out; score joints into it and the wall reads as cut blocks.

The chronology of the Ichikawa City Higashiyama Kaii Memorial Museum records that in 1946 the painter Higashiyama Kaii began lodging on the upper floor of the office at the Nakamura family factory. No official source consulted states that the registered office is that building, though the dates do not rule it out.

What to Look For

Follow the joint lines across the office walls. Horizontal and vertical false joints turn the gritty washed surface into what looks like individual cut stones.

The cornice running level along the top of the wall and the arches over the windows give the building its Western feel. Each arch is small, but set in a row they put a steady rhythm into the front.

Next door, the north storehouse was sheathed in iron from the beginning, a completely different way of presenting a wall from the office's imitation stone. Two parts of quite different character, a store and an office, are joined as one registered property.

Visiting

The Nakamura Family Residence North Storehouse and Office is privately owned and the interior is closed. Ichikawa City's and Chiba Prefecture's heritage pages give no visiting days or booking procedure (checked 25 September 2026).

Because the carriage gate opens beside the office, the office stands close to the road. To see the exterior you will be looking from the eastern end of the north wall, through the gateway as far as it allows. Avoid pointing a camera into the grounds.

Directions and the conditions for seeing the estate as a whole are covered on the Nakamura Family Residence page.