Watanabe Family Residence South Storehouse

The Biggest Building Left Standing at Umeta

The Watanabe Family Residence South Storehouse (渡辺家住宅南蔵, Watanabe-ke Jūtaku Minami-gura, also written Minamigura) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse at Iwase 85, Umeta, Sukagawa City, Fukushima Prefecture, put up in the early Meiji period and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 10 November 2005 under registration number 07-0079.

Its building area is fifty-three square metres, more than twice that of the east storehouse and well over twice the north storehouse. The plan is four and a half bays along the ridge by two and a half across, two full storeys under a gabled roof of sangawara pantiles. It stands to the south-west of what was the main house, turned to face east, and the entrance is in the long side rather than the gable end, the arrangement called hirairi. Under a lean-to eave on that east face, the opening is closed by a sliding door.

That sliding door is the first clue to what the building was for. Sliding leaves are quicker to work than the heavy swinging earthen doors used on the east storehouse. A store that gets opened often gets a door that opens easily.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry values this building specifically as a large-scale storehouse of the okiyane type.

A Roof That Sits Above the Walls

Okiyane means a roof built as its own structure, set over the top of an earthen storehouse rather than bearing on it. The mud vault is completed first; a timber roof frame is then raised across it, and the tiles go on that frame, with an air gap left between the two.

The arrangement matters more the bigger the building gets. Earth is heavy and slow to dry, and a wide span of mud shell asked to hold up a tiled roof is a wall under permanent load in a climate that freezes. Lift the roof clear and the shell carries only itself. Rain never lands on the earth at all, and moisture that works its way in has an air path out through the gap at the wall head.

Stand at the corner and the gap is visible: a dark line of shadow between the top of the plaster and the underside of the eaves, running the length of the building. On a storehouse of this size the line is long enough to read as a deliberate piece of design rather than an accident of framing.

Walls Left at the Mid-Coat

An earthen wall is built in coats. A rough coat goes on first over the bamboo lattice, then a levelling coat, then a mid-coat called nakanuri, and finally, if the owner wants it, a top coat of white shikkui lime. The south storehouse stops at the mid-coat. Its walls are the colour of the earth they are made of.

Unfinished is not the same as unprotected, and the building shows how the gap was covered. Board sheathing runs along the lower part of every face except the front, shielding the earth from splashback and drifted snow. Around the base runs a hakamagoshi, a flared skirt named after the hem of hakama trousers, which throws water clear of the wall foot instead of letting it soak in at the one point where it would do most damage. Windows are opened on both the first and second floors of the gable ends, giving the upper level light and a through draught.

Why the top coat never went on is not recorded. The plainer surface does sit oddly next to the east storehouse, which stands a short walk away wearing namako tilework and white lime. One reasonable reading is that the two buildings had different jobs and different audiences: the small storehouse by the service entrance was seen by everyone who came to the headman's door, and the big one at the back of the plot was not. The register does not say so, and the point is offered as an observation rather than a fact.

Four Registrations, Three Buildings

The Watanabe family served for generations as shōya, headman of the old village of Narita, and four buildings from their yard went onto the register together on 10 November 2005, with the public notice appearing on 5 December. They were the main house and the east, south and north storehouses.

In January 2013 the main house burned. Sukagawa City records the loss, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs list of registrations cancelled after fire and similar causes shows Watanabe Family Residence Main House removed on 16 April 2015. The three storehouses were unharmed and remain registered, which is why a visitor today finds an incomplete set: the buildings that stored the household's goods, without the household's house.

The south storehouse is now the largest structure on the plot. It was not built to be that.

Visiting

The south storehouse is privately owned and closed to the public. Sukagawa City lists the owner as a private individual, and there is no visitor facility, no opening season, no admission fee and no interior access. Seeing it means seeing it from the public road, which is the only thing anyone should attempt here.

Umeta sits in the western part of Sukagawa City, about thirteen kilometres from JR Sukagawa Station on the Tōhoku Main Line. Bus service in this part of the city is sparse, so a car or taxi is the practical approach; Sukagawa Station itself is a little over ten minutes by local train from Kōriyama. Photographs taken from the road are unobjectionable, but visitors should not step onto the plot and should not contact the owner. Enquiries about the buildings go to the Cultural Property Section of Sukagawa City's Cultural Promotion Division, on 0248-94-2152.

All three storehouses stand together, so one stop covers them. Seen side by side, they make the argument better than any single one of them does: the same construction technique, three sizes, three finishes, three jobs.