Wakana Family Residence

About the Wakana Family Residence

The Wakana Family Residence (若菜家住宅, Wakana-ke Jūtaku) is a farming household in the hamlet of Mitsuya in Iwatsuki-machi, Kitakata City, Fukushima Prefecture, whose four brick storehouses, built between 1910 and 1921, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on September 10, 2010.

The four are the Brick Zashiki Storehouse, the Three-Story Brick Storehouse, the Brick Workshop Storehouse and the Brick Miso Storehouse. Mitsuya is a cluster of about five houses, each with brick storehouses of its own, and travel guides usually list it as the Mitsuya brick storehouses. The Wakana family is the one household in the hamlet that opens its storehouses to visitors.

Bricks from the Mitsuya Kiln

Kitakata is known as a town of kura, the thick-walled storehouses found all over the city. The Kitakata Tourism and Products Association points out that the outlying farm hamlets are full of distinctive kura too, and that brick, a material usually kept for special buildings, spread here to ordinary farm buildings, something it calls unusual. The association names the Wakana storehouses among its representative kura open to visitors.

The bricks came from the Mitsuya climbing kiln, also in the Miyazu district: a large kiln of ten connected firing chambers that Fukushima Prefecture presents as part of its modern industrial heritage. According to local tourism information, the Wakana family, farmers here for generations, supplied firewood to the kiln after it opened in the Meiji era and were paid in bricks. The storehouses are said to have been designed and built by Tanaka Mataichi, a Kitakata-born bricklayer who learned his trade in Tokyo.

Bricks from one kiln did not make four identical buildings. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records English bond for the zashiki and three-story storehouses and stretcher bond for the miso storehouse, and notes that the workshop storehouse mixes in glazed bricks for effect.

Layout and Registration

Pieced together from the Agency's descriptions, the four buildings of the Wakana Family Residence sit roughly as follows. Dates and building areas come from the same database.

• The Brick Zashiki Storehouse runs north to south beside the road, on the plot that spreads east of it. It is a one-story brick building of 37 square meters, built in 1916.
• The Three-Story Brick Storehouse stands just south of it with its ridge running east to west: three stories on a footprint of 31 square meters, also from 1916.
• The Brick Miso Storehouse lines the south edge of the plot, ridge east to west. One story, 26 square meters, built in 1921.
• The Brick Workshop Storehouse fills the southeast corner. At 138 square meters over two stories it is by far the largest. It went up in 1910, was extended in 1932 and was renovated around 1985.

Read together, the zashiki and three-story storehouses line up north to south near the road, with the miso storehouse along the south edge and the workshop storehouse in the southeast corner. All four were in place within about eleven years.

Local guides date the zashiki storehouse to 1917, one year later than the 1916 given by the Agency and by Fukushima Prefecture's list. This article follows the Agency.

The storehouses were registered on September 10, 2010, in the 68th round of registrations, under the consecutive numbers 07-0117 to 07-0120. All four were registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and the Agency singles out the Three-Story Brick Storehouse as a symbol of an area where brick storehouses cluster. Fukushima Prefecture lists the owner as a private individual.

Visiting the Wakana Family Residence

The Wakana Family Residence is still a farm and a family home, but it welcomes visitors to its storehouses. Admission is 200 yen for adults and free for students. The regional site Gurutto Aizu gives entry hours of 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; another local listing mentions irregular closing days, so it is worth phoning ahead (0241-22-9459).

Two buildings can be entered: the workshop storehouse, whose upper floor displays the family's ceremonial tableware and household heirlooms, and the zashiki storehouse, with its lacquered zelkova parlor. The three-story and miso storehouses are seen mainly from outside. No photography policy is published, so ask when you arrive.

The Wakana Family Residence lies northeast of JR Kitakata Station on the Ban'etsu West Line, about 4 kilometers in a straight line and roughly 15 minutes by car. The Mitsuya kiln that fired the bricks is in the same Miyazu district, and seeing it makes clear where the storehouse walls came from.