Sanada Family Residence Storehouse

Earth and Brick Under One Coat of Plaster

The Sanada Family Residence Storehouse (眞田家住宅土蔵, Sanada-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is a storehouse south of the inner reception wing in the Sanada compound, Higashimachi, Mihara City, Hiroshima Prefecture, first built between 1912 and 1918 and extended in 1928, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building) on 4 February 2021. A corridor links it to the reception wing.

The Sanada Family Residence Storehouse is really two stores joined together. The northern one is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri earthen storehouse; the southern one is a three-storey brick building. Both have gabled Sangawara-buki roofs with ridges running north to south, and their outer walls are finished together in Shikkui lime plaster, so from outside they read as a single white storehouse. The door is on the north side, the two parts connect only at ground level, and both roofs are carried on Wagoya, the traditional Japanese roof framing. The building area is 85 square meters.

Why It Was Registered

The storehouse was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it helps form the southeast edge of the compound.

What makes the Sanada Family Residence Storehouse unusual is that it wraps two different construction methods, earthen and brick, in one plaster skin. A three-storey brick store is dressed to look like a traditional white earthen one. The database does not say which half dates from the early Taishō years and which from the 1928 extension. That the two connect only on the ground floor suggests two buildings joined after the fact.

What to Notice

At first glance the Sanada Family Residence Storehouse looks like any white-walled storehouse under a tiled gable. The telling detail is height: the two-storey northern store and the three-storey southern one share the same roof orientation, so their ridges step up one level from north to south.

The roof framing appears in a database photograph captioned as the timber roof structure of the store. Wagoya relies on short posts standing on beams to carry the roof, a native Japanese method quite different from a Western truss. That even the brick section uses it is something you would never guess from outside.

The corridor to the reception wing suggests the store held furnishings and utensils for entertaining, right beside the rooms where they were used, but we have found no record of what was actually kept here.

Visiting

The Sanada Family Residence Storehouse is private, its interior is closed, and we found no public opening as of September 2026. The national database places it in the southeast corner of the compound, while the Council for Cultural Affairs' 2020 summary says it stands with the gate facing the Sanyo Road; whether it can be seen from the street has not been checked on site.

Directions and general visiting notes are on the Sanada Family Residence page.