Horiguchi Family Residence Annex

The Working Building on the Street

The Horiguchi Family Residence Annex (堀口家住宅付属屋, Horiguchi-ke Jūtaku Fuzokuya) is a two-storey timber building of 1896 that adjoins the east side of the shop storehouse along the old road through Kaminocho, Shibukawa City, Gunma Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 4 December 2000.

Its ridge runs east to west under a Kirizuma-zukuri gable, with the long side facing the road in the Hirairi manner. The roof was first covered in boards and is now sheet metal. With a building area of 131 square metres, the Horiguchi Family Residence Annex is the largest of the five registered Horiguchi buildings. It stands on a separate lot, 2341, from the shop and main house at 2335.

Why It Was Registered: A Meiji Street Front

The Horiguchi Family Residence Annex was registered as a model of its building type. The Agency for Cultural Affairs values it for preserving, together with the shop storehouse, the look of the road in the Meiji era.

About thirty years after the shop storehouse of 1866 went up, this working building was added beside it. The pairing of a black-plastered shop and a timber annex along the road was registered as a record of a mid-Meiji merchant's street front.

What to Look For: A Workshop With Trolley Rails

The ground floor of the Horiguchi Family Residence Annex served as a shop that doubled as a workshop. Trolley rails remain in the floor, a sign that goods were moved here on small carts.

Upstairs, the side facing the road was used as a warehouse. Goods were handled below and stored above at the front, which suggests a division of labour: the shop storehouse presented the business to customers, and the annex did the back-room work.

From outside, the timber annex runs straight on from the sealed black walls of the shop. On the same street front, a fire-resistant shop and a roomy timber workshop show two quite different ideas of what a building was for.

Visiting the Horiguchi Family Residence Annex

The Horiguchi Family Residence Annex is one of the buildings Horiguchi Co., Ltd. keeps as its former head office, the Misegura Kinenkan. No opening days or hours for the interior are published, so the ground floor with its rails is not generally open.

Because the annex lines the road, its exterior can be seen from the street. It reads best together with the shop storehouse as a single frontage. Please do not enter the grounds.