Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House

What the Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House Is

The Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House (都築酒店店舗及び主屋, Tsuzuki Saketen Tenpo oyobi Shuoku) is a merchant's shop-house of 1887 in the Oda district of Uchiko Town, Ehime Prefecture, listed as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property on January 31, 2003. It stands directly on the street in a mountain settlement in the upper valley of the Oda River, well inland from the coast.

It is a 2-storied building in Dozo-zukuri, the thick earthen-walled construction normally reserved for fireproof storehouses, under a tiled roof, with a building area of 122 square meters. Using storehouse construction for a shop that opens onto a street is the first thing to understand about it. The gable ends are plastered over so that no post or beam shows, and from each of them a projecting wing wall, a sode-udatsu, reaches out toward the road.

The large doorway at ground level has been altered over the years, but the lattice doors survive well. Inside there is a hakokaidan, a chest staircase built as a cabinet with drawers below the treads. Upstairs, half of the street-facing side carries a railing, and the second floor was given unusual height. A family lived and traded under one roof here, and the section of the building records how the two uses were separated.

Oda was a rural market town where periodic markets drew people down from the surrounding forests. In January 2005 it merged with the neighboring towns of Uchiko and Gokinosho to form the present Uchiko Town. The name on the map changed; the width and alignment of the street that the Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House faces did not.

Why It Is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records one registration criterion for the Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House: that the building is a model of design. Its database entry calls the house a fine example of a Meiji-era shop-and-residence.

The value lies in what survived rather than in display. Shop buildings are altered constantly because trade demands it, and the street frontage usually goes first. Here the large doorway was remodeled, but the lattice doors stayed, the chest staircase stayed, and so did the railing upstairs and the generous ceiling height that go with it. Plan and section can both still be read in a single building.

The projecting wing walls deserve their own look. A sode-udatsu stops fire from traveling along a row of houses and, at the same time, announces that the household could afford to build one. Uchiko's better-known merchant street has them too. Finding a matched pair on a house this far up a mountain valley says something about how much money once moved through Oda.

In the list of cultural properties published by Uchiko Town, this house is the earliest of the town's registered buildings. The famous townscape sits in the town center; the first registration went to a single house in the hills.

What to Look For From the Street

The Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House was built hard against the road, and since the interior is closed, the street is where the visit happens. Take the facade from one end to the other before looking at any detail.

The ends come first. At each gable, the wall pushes forward toward the road: these are the wing walls, and they frame the whole front like a pair of brackets. They were built to keep a neighbor's fire from crossing over, but nobody who paid for them was indifferent to how they looked.

Between them, the gable faces are plastered smooth. No timber is visible anywhere on them. With the lines of the frame erased, the wall reads as a single heavy surface, which is exactly what Dozo-zukuri does. Set against that weight, the fine vertical rhythm of the lattice doors at ground level is the contrast the builder was working with.

Look up. Half of the street side of the second floor opens behind a railing, the one place where this otherwise sealed box lets light and air through. Because the upper floor was built tall, it reads as larger from the road than the proportions of a village house would lead you to expect.

Then come back down to the lattice doors. The wide entrance beside them has been changed, but the lattice itself carries the original spacing of the slats and the color that only wood exposed to a century of weather acquires. Photographs flatten this; standing in front of it does not.

Visiting the Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House

The Tsuzuki Liquor Store and Main House is privately owned and the interior is not open to the public. Viewing is from the street only. Do not enter the plot, peer through the lattice, or ring the bell. The building has survived because people have gone on living in it.

Photographing the exterior from the public road is fine. Keep residents and neighbors out of your frames, and do not set up a tripod where it blocks a narrow street that people use daily.

By public transport, the nearest railway station is Uchiko on the JR Yosan Line. From in front of the station, the Uchiko town bus on the Oda route runs to its terminus at Oda Shisho-mae in about 50 minutes, and the house is about 5 minutes on foot from there along the street. The Oda route does not operate on Sundays, public holidays, or over the New Year period, and fares are capped at 500 yen. Services are infrequent, so check your return departure before you set out.

Drivers reach Oda on National Route 380. There is no visitor parking at the house; use a public facility nearby and do not stop on the street.

One point of orientation. The preserved merchant townscape that most visitors mean when they say Uchiko is in the town center, and this house is not in it. Oda lies east of the center, deep in the mountains, close to an hour away by bus. Plan the two as separate outings rather than a single afternoon.