Matsumotoya

Three storehouses on a long narrow plot

Matsumotoya is a merchant family's group of storehouses in Sanchome, Kitakata City, Fukushima Prefecture, where three buildings raised between the late Taisho era and about 1928 were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 1 August 2016. The property belongs to Matsumotoya Ltd.

The three are the shop storehouse, the document storehouse and the household storehouse, carrying consecutive registration numbers from 07-0162 to 07-0164.

The plot is the narrow-fronted, deep-running strip typical of a merchant town. The shop storehouse faces west onto the street, the document storehouse stands towards the east of the southern side, and the household storehouse occupies the southeast corner. Trade at the front and storage behind: the arrangement is the plan.

Three storehouses in a town full of them

Kitakata is known for storehouses. Most of the survivors, though, stand singly, and it is less common to find a set with different uses still together on one plot. That is where the value of Matsumotoya lies.

All three were listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country rather than as models of design. The judgement is about the whole run from street to back of plot surviving intact, not about any one elevation.

The uses divide cleanly. The shop storehouse was where business was done, the document storehouse held papers and ledgers, the household storehouse held the family's goods. What a merchant kept, and where, shows in how each building is made.

Doors for show, doors for work

The shop storehouse is two storeys of Dozo-zukuri covering 49 square metres, with the shop below and a shallow lean-to across the front. Two eight-Tatami rooms sit above. The lower wall is finished in sprayed artificial stone and the rest in Shikkui plaster. Three windows with double-leaf earthen doors run across the upper front under a small canopy with flanking walls. Only the face turned to the street is worked this heavily.

The document storehouse is gabled and Sangawara-buki tiled, entered on the gable end, with an anteroom on the west front. Both floors are boarded, with cupboards worked into the corners. The lower wall is mortar-rendered and the rest plastered, and the windows carry single-leaf iron shutters. Only the upper front window has the double earthen doors, which again marks the face that shows.

The household storehouse is gabled and tiled as well but entered on the long side, from the north, its ground floor a concrete-floored space. Three windows on the north carry single-leaf iron shutters, and its treatment is otherwise close to the document storehouse. Having neither anteroom nor earthen doors is the measure of the difference in use.

If you compare the three, look at the window fittings. Earthen doors where the building is seen, iron shutters where it is not: the rule holds across all three.

Visiting

The three buildings at Matsumotoya are privately owned and still in use. This is not a museum, and the interiors cannot be visited. The street front of the shop storehouse can be seen from the road at any hour.

The document storehouse and the household storehouse stand behind, and little more than their roofs shows from the street. Do not enter the plot. Photography from the public road is unrestricted.

The address is 4791 Sanchome, Kitakata City. It is within walking distance of Kitakata Station on the JR Ban-etsu West Line, on the route people follow when walking the storehouse streets.

This information was checked on 17 September 2026. Arrangements can change, so ask the Kitakata tourist information office if you want to see inside.