Amano Family Residence West Storehouse

About the Amano Family Residence West Storehouse

The Amano Family Residence West Storehouse (天野家住宅西蔵, Amano-ke Jūtaku Nishigura) is a two-storey clay-walled storehouse built in the early Meiji era, about 1868 to 1882, on the Amano family estate in Mimigai, Odaka Ward, Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018. It was altered in the early Showa era.

The Amano Family Residence West Storehouse is a dozo with a tiled roof and a building area of 39 m², standing toward the west end of the estate's south front. It was a store for household goods, the family's furnishings and clothing, rather than for rice. It is the oldest of the six registered structures.

Why the West Storehouse Matters

The Amano Family Residence West Storehouse was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for its contribution to the historic landscape, under registration number 07-0204.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as solidly built and, like the Rice Storehouse to the east, part of the estate's formal front. The Council for Cultural Affairs report of 20 July 2018 also points to the two storehouses on the front wall as a defining feature of the Amano Family Residence.

In date, the Amano West Storehouse is some 30 to 40 years older than the 1911 main house and about half a century older than the 1926 Rice Storehouse. No other building on the estate goes back to the early Meiji years.

How the Amano West Storehouse Is Built

From outside, the Amano Family Residence West Storehouse resembles its neighbour. It has the same separately framed Okiyane roof, a gable roof with the entrance in the gable end (Tsumairi), a door in the middle of the north wall and a lean-to Geya over it. Like the Rice Storehouse, it opens into the yard and shows a plain gable to the road.

The differences are in the details. Its tile-and-plaster Namako-kabe covers only the lower part of the wall, a dado, where the Rice Storehouse is clad in it for the whole ground floor.

The biggest difference is the frame. The Amano Family Residence West Storehouse has through-posts, running unbroken from ground floor to upper floor, set one shaku apart, about 30 cm. In the Rice Storehouse the posts are half a ken, about 0.9 m, apart, so here they stand roughly three times as close. The clay walls are packed with timber.

The roof is carried on Nobori-bari, beams laid on the slope of the roof, a traditional Japanese way of framing. Two storehouses side by side on the same front wall, then, use quite different structures: one dense with posts and sloping beams, the other with wider post spacing and a truss.

Seeing the Amano Family Residence West Storehouse

The Amano Family Residence West Storehouse is part of a private home and its interior is not open, so the close-set posts and sloping beams cannot be seen.

It stands toward the west on the south side of the plot. If anything of the Amano West Storehouse can be seen from outside, it will be the south gable and the tiled dado, but this has not been checked on site. Please stay off the property and photograph only from the public road.