Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store

About the Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store

The Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store (浅井銃砲火薬店, Asai Jūhō Kayakuten) is an early Showa merchant property built between 1926 and 1945 in the Nishimachi quarter of Funatsu, Kamioka-cho, Hida City, Gifu Prefecture, and its shop and main house, storehouse and wall were entered as three Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on April 25, 2014. The registrations take their name straight from the shop sign: a dealer in firearms and gunpowder whose street-front shop and living quarters, the storehouse beside them and the board fence around the front garden were recorded together as one compound.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates all three to the early Showa era, 1926 through 1945, and goes no further in fixing the year. The owner field is blank for each of them.

A Merchant House in Kamioka

Funatsu is the old core of Kamioka, a former town now part of Hida City. According to the Hida City Board of Education, the settlement grew from the castle town of Higashimachi Castle, which was abandoned in the early Edo period, and in 1874 the Mitsui partnership acquired a gallery of the Kamioka Mine and began running it as a modern operation. Until mining stopped in 2001, Kamioka was one of Japan's major sources of zinc and lead. Its location and the know-how built up in mining were later put to use in building the Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande neutrino detectors.

The Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store buildings date from the years when this mining town was thriving. The public sources consulted say nothing about when the business was founded or who commissioned the buildings.

How the Three Registered Parts Fit Together

Read together, the Agency's three entries describe a compound that faces a street on its west side, with the registered structures strung along that frontage.

• The shop and main house faces west onto the street. Its front is that of a two-storey Machiya townhouse, and on the right as you face it (the south end) a reception room rendered in mortar is attached, Western in style. It is built of timber and in Dozo-zukuri earthen-wall construction, has 2 storeys and a tiled roof, and covers 270 square meters.
• The storehouse stands next to the main house on its north side. It is a Dozo-zukuri building with 2 storeys above ground and 1 below, covering 44 square meters. The earth-floored space around it is roofed by a Geya lean-to extended from the main house.
• The wall is a board fence that runs with a bend along the southwest side of the plot and encloses the front garden. It is timber with a metal-sheet roof and is 18 meters long in total. The guest parlour behind the reception room of the main house looks onto this front garden.

From north to south, then, you pass the storehouse, the townhouse front, the Western reception room and finally the fenced garden. Because the fence turns the southwest corner of a corner plot, the compound shows itself on two sides.

The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended the three for registration on November 15, 2013, and they were entered in the 77th round of registrations on April 25, 2014, as numbers 21-0220, 21-0221 and 21-0222. All three meet the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The council's summary credits the townhouse front, together with the storehouse to its north and the fence bending along the southwest, with setting off the streetscape.

Visiting the Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store

The Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store is not open to the public, and visitors cannot enter the buildings or the grounds. No open days or special viewings were found. The property is seen from the public road.

From the street you can take in the front of the shop and main house with its reception room, the storehouse to the north, and the board fence turning the southwest corner. Please keep photography to the road and stay out of the way of traffic, residents and anyone working there.

Kamioka has no railway, so the way in is by bus. The Nohi Bus Furukawa-Kamioka line runs from the Takayama Nohi Bus Center via JR Hida-Furukawa Station to Kamioka, and the operator gives about 45 minutes from Hida-Furukawa to Kamioka. From the terminus at the Nohi Bus Kamioka Office, the Asai Gun and Gunpowder Store is about 600 meters on foot, roughly a 10-minute walk. Services are fewer on weekends and public holidays, so check the timetable before setting out.