What a mizukiri is
A mizukiri is a narrow horizontal ledge that runs around an outer wall partway up its height. Rain running down the face of the wall meets the projection and drips clear, so the wall below stays dry. It is most common on earthen storehouses finished in lime plaster, and Japanese records usually mention it together with the hachimaki, as in a mizukiri and a hachimaki run around the walls.
It tends to sit where one wall finish gives way to another. On the second storehouse of the Matsumura residence in Habikino, Osaka Prefecture, from the late Edo period, the lower wall is clad in vertical boards and the upper wall is white plaster, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs notes a mizukiri at the junction, shedding water from the plaster before it reaches the boards. The sacred storehouse of Minase Shrine in Shimamoto, Osaka Prefecture, built in the Taisho era, is plastered all over with a single mizukiri around it.
Materials vary. Some are plaster built out in a step, some are covered in boards or sheet metal, and some are rows of small roof tiles. The tiled version has its own name, mizukiri-gawara, and is especially common in Kochi.
What to look for
Look up a storehouse wall for a thin, eave-like step running all the way round partway up. A thick plaster band right under the eaves is the hachimaki, so position tells the two apart. Records for the Ginjo storehouse of the Aramasa Sake Brewery in Akita and the archive storehouse of Nagano Meijo in Chikuma, Nagano Prefecture, both list the two side by side.
Count them too. Tall two-storey walls sometimes carry one mizukiri at mid-height and another at the top of the base, giving the white wall several horizontal lines.
In writing, say mizukiri when the record says only that, and use mizukiri-gawara only where the record or photographs confirm tiles. Treating every mizukiri as a tiled one turns plaster ledges into tiles that are not there.
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, Database of National Cultural Properties: Matsumura Family Residence, Storehouse 2
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00005645
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, Database of National Cultural Properties: Minase Shrine Sacred Storehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00011158
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, Database of National Cultural Properties: Aramasa Sake Brewery Ginjo Storehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00009879
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, Database of National Cultural Properties: Nagano Meijo Archive Storehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00010299
Last verified: 2026.10.04