Sanrakuso Storehouse

Sanraku-so Storehouse: Working Architecture with a Sculptor's Eye for Water

Every prosperous merchant house needed a storehouse, and at Sanraku-so that role falls to a compact earthen-walled building set toward the west of the site. Raised in 1893, only two years after the main house, it is a two-storey dozo of about 34 square meters, some 6.9 meters along the ridge and 4.9 meters deep, roofed in gabled pantile. Plain in purpose, it turns out to be one of the more quietly inventive structures on the property.

The interior follows the logic of storage. The ground floor is an earth-floored working space, while the upper floor was fitted out as a living room, a common way of squeezing habitable space from a fireproof shell.

Reading the Walls

Sanraku-so was registered as a tangible cultural property on 26 January 2011, and the storehouse was valued for the part it plays in the historic scene of the district. Its exterior is finished in white lime plaster, with the lower wall protected by vertical board cladding, a practical guard against splashback and wear.

The telling feature is how the building handles rain. Along the upper part of the ground floor runs a projecting line of drip tiles, the mizukiri-gawara, throwing water clear of the plaster below. At the two gable ends of the upper storey, the same idea is shaped into mountain-form drip tiles, their peaked profile both shedding water and giving the plain box a crisp silhouette. Function and form meet in a single detail.

What to Notice on a Visit

Stand at the rear of the property and the storehouse does something specific: it tightens the composition of the back of the site, its white walls and dark board base setting a firm edge behind the residential buildings. This is not a showpiece like the reception annex, and that is the point. It lets a visitor read how a working merchant household actually functioned, with fireproof storage held apart from the living quarters.

Compare its lines with the grander roofs of the main house nearby. The storehouse speaks in a plainer register, but the care given to its drip tiles shows that even the utilitarian buildings received real craft.

Part of a Rare Survival

What makes Sanraku-so unusual is that buildings of close dates survive together, main house, annex, storehouse and gate with wall, so the storehouse can be seen in its original relationship to the whole. The interior of the property is open to the public without charge as a facility of the city of Shobara. As the district sits far from major rail lines, check opening hours and closing days before travelling.