A Reception Room Built Inside a Storehouse
The Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura (藤田家住宅座敷蔵, Fujita-ke Jūtaku Zashiki-gura) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse at 46-1 Nibanchō in Shirakawa City, Fukushima Prefecture, built in 1908 during the Meiji period and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) on 15 August 2024.
The name describes a contradiction that Japanese building practice resolved rather elegantly. A kura is a fireproof box, thick-walled, small-windowed, built to keep goods safe from fire and theft. A zashiki is a formal tatami reception room, the most public and most decorated space a household owns. Put the two words together and you get a building type that appeared across the merchant towns of northern Japan: a storehouse whose interior was finished not as a warehouse but as a parlour, so that the family's best room was also the room most likely to survive a fire sweeping the highway.
This one stands to the north-west of the shop and main house, first in the line of storehouses running back from the street. Two storeys of dozō construction, gable roof clad in copper plate, exterior walls finished in white plaster. A hachimaki, a raised plaster band, runs around the building at eaves level, the detail that gives Meiji storehouses their characteristic crisp shadow line just under the roof. Building area is 60 square metres.
The ground floor holds two rooms. A kuramae, a covered forecourt of the kind that lets people enter a storehouse without opening the whole face of it to the weather, is attached at the south side of the western room. The eastern room carries the formal apparatus: a tokonoma alcove with an adjoining tokowaki, and a veranda along the eastern edge. The owner's own description gives the two rooms as fifteen and ten tatami mats, each with a tokonoma and staggered shelving.
Ebony, Rosewood, and a Shelf That Curves
Of the three Fujita buildings registered together in 2024, this is the only one cited under the criterion of being a model of design. The other two were taken for their contribution to the historic landscape. The distinction is not bureaucratic hair-splitting: it means the assessors judged the interior itself to be of a quality worth holding up as an example, rather than valuing the building mainly for what it does to the streetscape.
What earned that reading is concentrated around the tokonoma. The timber was selected with unusual care, including ebony and rosewood, both imported hardwoods with a dense grain and a near-black finish, and both expensive enough that their use in a provincial merchant house says something about how the Fujita brewing fortune stood in 1908. The chigaidana, the pair of shelves set at staggered heights beside the alcove, is joined by connecting members shaped from curved stock rather than straight boards. That is a difficult piece of joinery. A straight shelf support is cut and fitted; a curved one has to be carved out of solid timber that has been chosen for the direction of its grain, and any error shows immediately in the reflected light along the edge.
The Agency's commentary calls the result a well-made example of modern Japanese-style architecture, kindai wafū kenchiku, the term used for buildings that keep traditional carpentry and traditional room planning while working within Meiji and later conditions. Registration number 07-0285, granted in the 107th round on 15 August 2024.
A house of this standing needed such a room. Fujiya, also trading as Fujita Honten, had been brewing miso and soy sauce in Nibanchō since around 1830, founded by a first-generation head recorded as Fujita Yagobei, and by 1908 the family was several generations established with a senior branch in the sake trade whose product appears in records connected with the Shirakawa daimyo Matsudaira Sadanobu. The corner where the Ōshū Kaidō met the Haragata Kaidō was where the town's traffic passed. A storehouse parlour finished in ebony was a statement made to people who would understand exactly what it cost.
The Building Is Now the Museum
The unusual thing about visiting this particular registered building is that you do not look at it from outside. You go in, and you go in as a museum visitor.
The Fujita Memorial Museum was founded by the Fujita Education Promotion Foundation in 1967 inside Nanko Park, the historic scenic garden south of the town centre, and became a registered museum under the Museum Act in 1979. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake damaged that building badly enough to close it. In April 2021 the museum reopened here, in the two storehouses on the old Fujita plot, under the working name Fujiya-gura. The zashiki-gura is the heart of it.
The collection suits the room. It centres on calligraphy, poetry and painting by Matsudaira Sadanobu, the Shirakawa domain lord who served as chief senior councillor of the shogunate, along with work by Tani Bunchō, the painter Sadanobu employed, and by Yūki Somei, a Nihonga painter and professor at the Tokyo Fine Arts School who was on friendly terms with the Shirakawa Fujita family. Seeing Edo-period painting hung in an alcove of Meiji ebony, in a room built by the family that knew the artist, is a different experience from seeing the same scrolls in a modern gallery case.
Opening hours are 10:00 to 16:00. The museum closes for the winter across January, February and March, and again while exhibitions are being changed over, so it is worth checking before travelling. Admission during special exhibitions is 500 yen for adults and 300 yen for high school and university students; for the standing display, 300 yen and 100 yen. Junior high school students and younger enter free. Photography conditions are not published, so ask at the reception desk.
Getting here is straightforward. Shirakawa Station on the Tōhoku Main Line is about 1.2 kilometres away, roughly a fifteen-minute walk, and Shin-Shirakawa Station on the Tōhoku Shinkansen about 1.6 kilometres. Komine Castle sits close to Shirakawa Station, which makes an easy pairing.
Two things to keep straight. The building group is described by the city as containing three storehouses, but only two of them, this zashiki-gura and the late-Edo dozō immediately west of it, carry national registration. And an entirely separate property called Fujita Family Residence, registered in 2015, stands in Kamigyō-ku in Kyoto with no connection to the Shirakawa family.
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Q&A
- What exactly is the Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura?
- It is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse of 1908 at 46-1 Nibanchō in Shirakawa City, Fukushima Prefecture, whose interior was finished as a formal tatami reception room rather than as a warehouse. It was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 15 August 2024, registration number 07-0285.
- Can I go inside the Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura?
- Yes. The building forms part of the Fujita Memorial Museum, which reopened on this site in April 2021. It is open 10:00 to 16:00 and closed from January through March and during exhibition changeovers.
- How much does it cost to see the Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura?
- Admission to the Fujita Memorial Museum is 500 yen for adults and 300 yen for high school and university students during special exhibitions, and 300 yen and 100 yen for the standing display. Junior high school students and younger are admitted free.
- Why was the Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura registered?
- It was registered as a model of design, the only one of the three Fujita buildings cited under that criterion. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to the quality of the interior, in particular the tokonoma area built from carefully chosen timbers including ebony and rosewood, and staggered shelving joined by members shaped from curved stock.
- What is displayed inside the Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura?
- The museum shows calligraphy, poetry and painting associated with Matsudaira Sadanobu, lord of Shirakawa domain, together with work by the painter Tani Bunchō and by the Nihonga artist Yūki Somei, who was acquainted with the Shirakawa Fujita family.
Basic Information
| Name | Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura (藤田家住宅座敷蔵) |
|---|---|
| Location | 46-1 Nibanchō, Shirakawa City, Fukushima Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure); registration number 07-0285, 107th round; criterion: a model of design |
| Year Designated | 15 August 2024 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Dozō construction, two storeys; copper plate roof; building area 60 square metres |
| Owner | Fujita Education Promotion Foundation (public interest incorporated foundation) |
| Public Access | Open as part of the Fujita Memorial Museum, 10:00 to 16:00; closed January to March and during exhibition changeovers |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00014999
- Cultural Heritage Online — Fujita Family Residence Zashiki-Gura
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/541367
- Fujita Memorial Museum — About the Museum
- https://fujitakinenhakubutsukan.amebaownd.com/pages/4813846/profile
- Fujita Memorial Museum — Visitor Information
- https://fujitakinenhakubutsukan.amebaownd.com/pages/4813847/page_201603171106
- City of Shirakawa — Fujiya Building Group
- https://www.city.shirakawa.fukushima.jp/page/page004404.html
Last verified: 2026.08.25