Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse

What the Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse is

Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse (蕨岡家住宅土蔵, Warabioka-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is a two-story earthen-walled storehouse of 1900 at Masaki in Ainan Town, Minamiuwa District, Ehime Prefecture, and it was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 18 March 2003. Its footprint is 27 square meters, and it stands immediately south of the main house on the same plot.

The building is Dozo-zukuri, a construction in which a timber frame is packed and rendered with thick layers of earth until the walls behave like a solid mass. Above sits a north-south gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles, built in the okiyane manner: the tiled roof rests over the earthen shell as a separate frame, leaving an air gap between the two. Rain never reaches the earth directly, and trapped heat and moisture escape through the gap.

All the openings face north. A doorway with its own small pent roof occupies the center of the ground floor, and a window with vertical bars sits above it. Twenty-seven square meters is small against the 228 of the main house. Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse was never meant to be lived in; it is a box for keeping rice, tools and festival goods clear of fire and damp.

Why the storehouse was registered

Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse carries registration number 38-0041, part of the same thirty-sixth round as the main house and the gate, and the criterion applied was that the building is a model of design. As a Registered Tangible Cultural Property it is modest in size, and what earned the listing was precision of finish rather than scale.

The walls are rendered in Shikkui lime plaster, with the dado worked as Namako-kabe. Flat tiles are set against the wall and the joints between them are built up in plaster to a raised half-round profile, which armors the lower wall where splashback is worst while producing a black and white lattice across the surface. Protection and pattern arrive in the same operation.

Along the line where plaster meets tile runs a course of mizukiri-gawara, drip tiles projecting horizontally from the wall to catch water running down the render and throw it clear. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes this handling as careful work and records the storehouse as being in good condition. After roughly 125 years the earthen wall has not failed, and the management of water is part of the reason.

What to look for

The okiyane roof reads best from the gable end. Standing to the side, you can see daylight in the gap between the white earthen shell and the tiled roof above it. The roof is sitting on the walls rather than being part of them, and the gap makes that separation legible.

Namako-kabe repays close attention at the joints. A raised bead that runs as a true half-round, against one finished with a sharper crest, is where an individual plasterer's habit shows. A wall whose joints hold an even width from top to bottom is a statement of skill on its own.

Under the drip tiles the render carries old rain marks, a rhythm of stains left where water fell clear of the tile edges. The position of those marks confirms that the mizukiri-gawara have gone on doing their job.

The barred window on the north face is worth a look as well. It lets light and air into the upper floor while keeping hands out, and the tightness of the spacing between the bars says plainly what the contents were worth. Because Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse sits behind the main house, only the upper part of its white wall shows from the lane, over the roofs in front. In a village of timber and tile, that white catches the eye.

Visiting Warabioka Family Residence Storehouse

The storehouse stands inside a privately owned compound and is not open. There are no visiting hours, no admission fee and no booking system for interior access. The land is private and cannot be entered.

From the public lane there are angles where the top of the storehouse appears above the gate and the main house. It is the hardest of the three registered buildings to see, so walking north and south along the road on the east side of the compound, looking for the point where the white wall emerges, is the practical approach. Photography from the road is unrestricted; please keep it away from the household's private space.

Coming from the north, an Uwajima Bus leaves JR Uwajima Station for Jōhen and Sukumo and reaches Ainan Town in about an hour, after which the local Ipponmatsu (Masaki) and Jōhen service continues into Masaki. Coming from Kōchi Prefecture, the bus from Sukumo Station on the Tosa Kuroshio Railway takes around 30 minutes. Drivers leave the Matsuyama Expressway at Tsushima-Iwamatsu Interchange and run south on Route 56 for some 35 minutes. Lanes in the settlement are narrow and no visitor parking exists.

The Lifelong Learning Division of Ainan Town, on 0895-73-1112, handles questions about the storehouse and its registration.