Suzuki Family Residence Rice Storehouse

Where the rice from the reclaimed fields was kept

The Suzuki Family Residence Rice Storehouse (鈴木家住宅米蔵, Suzuki-ke Jūtaku Komegura) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse of the middle Meiji period at Suicho in Aisai City, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register of tangible cultural properties on 7 March 2008.

The name is literal. The Suzuki family were landlords across generations, and according to the group that manages the property today, it was Suzuki Ryūsuke, father of the politician Sentarō, who acquired the extensive reclaimed paddy that became one of the household's economic foundations. Those fields lay on silt carried down by the three great rivers of the Kiso system, inside the ring-levee farmland of the western Owari plain. The rice they produced came here. At 81 square metres the rice storehouse is considerably larger than the general storehouse beside the main house, which covers 57.

The building stands south of the main house, behind the gate, its ridge running east to west. The gabled roof is pantiled and entered from the gable end, and a skirt roof wraps from the east face round to the north. The national database records the fabric as middle Meiji, moved and extended in the early Shōwa years, so the position it occupies now is not its original one.

Carved brackets on a storehouse window

The detail to look for on the Suzuki Family Residence Rice Storehouse is the small pent roof over the window in the gable end. It is finished in lime plaster, and the brackets that carry it are carved with eyō, the decorative profiling normally seen on temple and shrine timbers.

Consider what that means. Eyō belongs on the ends of the arched beams of a shrine hall. Here it appears on the support of a window hood, on a building for storing grain, where it performs no function whatever. Somebody paid for the carving anyway. That single choice says more about how this household regarded its storehouses than any amount of general description.

The skirt roof on the east side serves as the kuramae, the working forespace. Its flanks are earth-walled and its east face is closed with vertical latticework, a screen that lets air through while keeping people and animals out. Placing a solid plastered plane next to an open lattice plane keeps the four sides of the low roof from reading as one monotonous band.

The registration criterion applied here concerns contribution to the historic landscape of the country: the building was recognised as part of a scene rather than as an isolated design.

A grain store that now holds a concert grand

This building has a present-day use. In May 2023 a piano was installed in the Suzuki Family Residence Rice Storehouse: a Steinway of about a century ago that the managing association says belonged to Suzuki Saburō, a descendant of the family. From December of that year the instrument has been used for concerts held on the property.

Putting a piano in an earthen storehouse is less eccentric than it sounds. Thick clay walls slow the passage of heat and moisture, so internal temperature and humidity swing far less than the air outside. Walls raised to protect rice turn out to suit an object made of wood, iron and wool. The association reports that conditions inside proved better than expected.

Harmonica and piano recitals, jazz, bossa nova, and rakugo storytelling have all been staged here. Keeping a historic building alive by using it, rather than freezing it, takes an audible form in this case.

Visiting

The Suzuki Family Residence Rice Storehouse is on private land with no regular opening, no fixed hours and no admission fee. Access is limited to the occasional open days arranged by the unincorporated association that manages the site and to the concerts and talks it organises. Most events are capped in number and require advance booking, handled through the association's own website.

Photography is governed by the organisers on the day, and filming during performances may be restricted, so check first.

The nearest station is Saya on the Meitetsu Bisai Line, about fifteen minutes on foot. Through trains from Meitetsu Nagoya run via the Tsushima Line and reach Saya in roughly thirty minutes. No parking is provided on site, so drivers should use a coin park nearby.