Izumiya Ryokan Storehouse

The Older Building on the Lot

The Storehouse of Izumiya Ryokan (和泉屋旅館土蔵, Izumiya Ryōkan Dozō) is a two-storey earthen-walled dozō standing on the grounds of an inn in the Tajima district of Minamiaizu Town, Fukushima Prefecture, dated by its style to the Meiji era of 1868 to 1911 and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 8 July 1999. It sits at the eastern end of the middle of the property, well back from National Route 121, on a plot that runs a long way from the street.

That plot shape is the first thing to understand about the building. Merchant and innkeeping households along the old Aizu Nishi Kaidō held narrow frontages and deep grounds, a pattern set by how road frontage was taxed and allocated in post-station towns. The public face of the household went at the road; everything that supported the business went behind it, strung out along the depth. The storehouse occupies that back region, which is why almost nobody who walks past Izumiya has seen it.

It is aligned north to south and entered from the gable end, an arrangement Japanese carpentry calls tsumairi. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a frontage of two and a half ken and a depth of six ken, roughly 4.5 by 11 metres, with a lean-to eave along the south face. The same record gives the registered building area as 115 square metres, a figure larger than those two dimensions multiplied together; the database does not explain the difference, and no other source resolves it.

Scorch Marks Under the Roof

The storehouse carries physical evidence of an event that reshaped the whole town. In May 1934 a fire ran through Tajima. The inn's main building, which stands between this storehouse and the road, was rebuilt in the aftermath and now carries its own registration; the storehouse survived, and traces of the fire remain in its upper part.

Survival of this kind is what a dozō is built for. Walls of thick clay laid over a bamboo lattice and finished in plaster carry heat poorly and give flame nothing to catch, which is why generations of Japanese merchants kept their stock, ledgers and heirlooms in one. The Izumiya storehouse adds a second device: an okiyane, a wooden roof frame set over the clay roof rather than joined into the structure below. In ordinary weather the okiyane keeps rain off the earthen core, which would otherwise erode. In a fire it can burn away while the clay beneath holds. The present covering is sheet iron, a material that came into common use for such roofs later in the building's life.

What the storehouse held was not treasure. The register notes it was used for the utensils and equipment of the business: the trays, lacquerware, bedding and serving gear that an inn of this size cycled through its rooms. The joinery and finishes inside and out are described as being of standard scale for the type, which is worth saying plainly. This is a good, ordinary storehouse of its period, and it was registered under the criterion of contribution to the historic character of the national landscape rather than for rarity or invention.

Its registration number is 07-0031, granted in the eighteenth round of registrations and publicly notified on 21 July 1999, one number after the main building. The two were assessed together, and a plaque near the inn's entrance records both as numbers 07-0030 and 07-0031.

Seeing It, and What Else Is Nearby

Be realistic about access. The storehouse is inside a private, working inn's grounds and is not visible from the public street; there is no admission, no opening hours and no viewing route. Guests staying at Izumiya are best placed to ask, and anyone else should telephone the inn on 0241-62-0048 before arriving with hopes. Photography inside the grounds needs the same courtesy. What the register describes is legible chiefly from close range, so a glance over a fence will not do much for you.

The building that does reward a walk-past is the main building at the front, completed in 1934, with a forward-facing undulating gable over its entrance porch and bracketing of a kind normally seen on temples. Reading the two together is the point: the storehouse is what stood before the fire, the main building is what the fire produced, and both are on the same deed.

Getting to Tajima is straightforward. Aizu-Tajima Station on the Aizu Railway is about five minutes' walk from the inn, and through services from Asakusa in Tokyo reach it over the Tobu, Yagan and Aizu lines in roughly three and a half to four hours. If you are timing a visit, the town is at its liveliest from 22 to 24 July for the Aizu-Tajima Gion Festival, whose otōya observances were designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 21 January 1981. Izumiya sits in Kamimachi, one of the neighbourhood groups in the festival's rotation. About ten minutes on foot lies the former Minamiaizu District Office of 1885, a pseudo-Western timber building designated an Important Cultural Property by Fukushima Prefecture in 1971 and open as a local history museum, and the Kokken sake brewery is a few doors from the inn.

One point of confusion to clear up: there are other inns in Japan called Izumiya Ryokan, including one at Reisenji Onsen in Nagano Prefecture. The registered storehouse described here belongs to the Izumiya Ryokan in Tajima, Minamiaizu Town, Fukushima Prefecture.