Ishida Family Rice Storehouse

Eleven Square Metres of Rice

The Ishida Residence Grain Store (石田家住宅籾蔵, Ishida-ke Jūtaku Momigura) is an early Shōwa-period plank granary in the Ōgawara district of Okuma, Futaba District, Fukushima Prefecture, entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 5 December 2019 under registration number 07-0229.

It is by some margin the smallest of the four registered buildings on the Ishida farmstead: a building area of 11 square metres, roughly the footprint of a modest bedroom. It stands on the west side of the main house with its ridge running north to south, single storey, gabled, roofed in metal sheeting. The Agency for Cultural Affairs places it between 1926 and 1945 and records a repair in 2006.

What it held was momi, rice still in the husk. The distinction matters more than it sounds. Hulled rice begins to deteriorate within months as the exposed grain oxidises and attracts insects, but rice left in its husk keeps for a year or more, the husk acting as a sealed jacket around each grain. A farming household therefore hulled only what it was about to eat or sell, and kept the rest of the harvest in a building designed for exactly this one job.

Built to Breathe

The granary is an itakura, a plank store. Horizontal boards are slotted into grooves cut down the inner faces of the posts, stacked one above another and held by nothing but their own weight and the grooves that carry them. No nails run through the wall boards. A split board can be drawn out and replaced without touching the frame.

Set the granary beside the earthen storehouse on the same plot and the contrast is a lesson in matching a building to its contents. The dozō works by mass: thick mud walls that hold temperature steady and shrug off fire. The itakura works by movement: thin timber walls that let air pass through the joints so that grain never sits in still, humid air. Rice that cannot breathe grows mould.

The floor is boarded and raised a step above the sill timber, which lifts the stored crop clear of ground moisture and leaves a gap underneath for air. Doorways open on both the east and west faces, so the building can be entered from either side and aired straight through.

The frame is worked out with a farmer's economy. Four bays run the length of the building, and a beam is laid across at each post position. Only the central beam carries a short post to support the ridge purlin. Every other beam simply ties the two walls together. Nothing is present that the span does not require.

The metal roof sheeting is a later covering. Corrugated and flat metal roofing spread widely across rural Japan during the Shōwa period as a cheap, light and fireproof replacement for thatch and shingles on outbuildings, and it is what stands over the granary today.

A Granary in a Town That Stopped Farming

Ōgawara was a farming settlement in the inland western part of Okuma, well back from the coast where the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was built in the 1960s and 1970s. Rice went into this granary within living memory. Then, after March 2011, the whole town was evacuated and the fields went out of cultivation.

The evacuation order over Ōgawara was lifted on 10 April 2019. The town hall moved into a new building in the district that May, and the granary and its three neighbouring structures were registered that December. Registration does not restore the farming economy that produced them, and it is not meant to. What it does is make a formal record that these buildings are worth keeping, and put the owner in touch with the support that comes with the register.

The granary is the hardest of the four to see from outside. It stands west of the main house, further into the plot than either the gate or the earthen storehouse, and the site is a private residence with no public opening. Visitors should stay on the road. The town has occasionally opened the property for organised activities, such as a January 2023 event at which participants cleaned the main house and grounds alongside a municipal curator and then walked the local sites. Ask Okuma Town Hall on 0240-23-7568 about anything planned.

The drive from the Okuma interchange of the Jōban Expressway takes about ten minutes, as does the drive from Ōno Station on the JR Jōban Line.