Ishiguro

What ishiguro means

Ishiguro are stone walls found in eastern Kochi Prefecture, in towns such as Nahari and Kiragawa in Muroto. Records write the word in quotation marks, as an "ishiguro" wall or an "ishiguro" neribei. Rounded stones from the beach or the riverbed are laid up around properties and along streets.

The region faces the Pacific and is struck by frequent typhoons, and the walls are explained as having developed to protect houses from wind and driving rain. Storehouses and townhouses with walls of Tosa-shikkui and rows of drip tiles are found in the same area, and together with the ishiguro they form streetscapes adapted to a harsh climate.

Some are mortared, in Nerizumi fashion, and others are dry-laid. The walls of the Mori house in Nahari are of mortared beach stones capped with small tiled roofs, and records also call them Neribei, though they differ in material and method from ordinary neribei of alternating tile and clay.

Reading the records and the wall

The Mori family house, formerly the residence of Nomura Mokuma, in Nahari has three ishiguro registered as Tangible Cultural Properties. The west wall runs south along the road from the south-west corner of the two-storey main house; on a cut-stone base, beach stones are laid in mortar under a small tiled roof, the wall 50 centimetres thick and 2.5 metres high, its ends secured with cut corner stones. The south wall is described as the so-called ishiguro neribei characteristic of Nahari, forming part of the estate and of the town's distinctive street scene. The east wall has a back gate at its centre with a brick arch.

A survey of Kiragawa in Muroto reports that ishiguro serve not only as street walls but also as partitions within courtyards, many about 1.7 metres high and 30 centimetres thick, with refined touches such as split stones laid with their cut faces outward. On site, compare how the round stones are laid, whether a small roof caps the wall and how the ends are finished with corner stones.