Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse

About the Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse

The Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse (天野家住宅米蔵, Amano-ke Jūtaku Komegura) is a two-storey clay-walled storehouse built in 1926 on the Amano family estate in Mimigai, Odaka Ward, Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018.

Built as a dozo, the thick-walled fireproof storehouse of rural Japan, the Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse has a tiled roof and a building area of 57 m². As its name says, it was built to hold rice. It stands at the south-east corner of the plot, on top of the stone retaining wall that forms the front of the estate, and it is the larger of the family's two registered storehouses.

Why the Rice Storehouse Matters

The Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for its contribution to the historic landscape, under registration number 07-0203.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs credits it on two counts. One is its sturdy construction, with closely spaced posts and a reinforced roof frame. The other is its position: raised on the front stone wall, it helps give the estate its formal street front. The Council for Cultural Affairs, reporting on 20 July 2018, made the same point about the pair of storehouses on the front wall.

The year after the Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse went up, the family built the granite gate and the concrete boundary walls. The storehouse was the first piece of that rebuilding of the estate's front.

How the Amano Rice Storehouse Is Built

The Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse has an Okiyane, a roof built as a separate frame and set on top of the clay walls. If the roof burned, it could fall away and leave the sealed store below intact. The roof is a simple gable, and the entrance is in the gable end, the arrangement called Tsumairi. The door sits in the middle of the north wall under a lean-to roof, a Geya.

Because the door faces north, the working side of the storehouse looks into the yard. What the road sees is the plain south gable.

The ground floor is faced with Namako-kabe: square tiles fixed to the wall and set in raised bands of white plaster, giving a raised grid that sheds rain and resists fire.

The structure is the real interest. Posts stand every half ken, about 0.9 m apart, which is close spacing for a storehouse. The roof frame combines curved beams, the naturally bent timbers long used in Japanese farmhouses, with a Truss, the triangulated Western frame. Old and new framing methods share one roof here, and that pairing is what the national database singles out as the storehouse's strength.

Seeing the Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse

The Amano Family Residence Rice Storehouse is part of a private home and its interior is not open, so the mixed roof frame cannot be seen.

It stands at the south-east corner, on the front stone wall. If anything of the Amano Rice Storehouse can be seen from outside, it will be the south gable and the tiled lower wall, but this has not been checked on site. Please stay off the property and photograph only from the public road.