Hiramatsu Barber Shop and Residence

The Barbershop That Survived the Fire

The Hiramatsu Riyoten Shop and Residence (平松理容店店舗兼住宅, Hiramatsu Riyoten Tenpo Ken Jutaku) stands at 2-7-20 Fuchu in Ishioka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, was built in 1928, and was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 23 July 2004.

It faces north on a side street running west off Nakamachi-dori, in the middle of the old town centre. The position matters more than it looks. In March 1929 a fire destroyed a large part of central Ishioka, and almost every building people now come here to see was built in the two or three years after it. Hiramatsu Riyoten was already standing. It came through the fire and is the oldest of the town's signboard-architecture shopfronts.

The front is finished in giseki, artificial stone, worked to look like cut masonry. Two storeys of timber behind, a steel-sheet roof above, a total building area of 84 square metres. Standing on the pavement opposite, the impression is of a small Greek temple that has been compressed to the width of a shop.

Plaster Doing the Work of Stone

Its registration number is 08-0134, and the criterion applied is the one covering buildings that serve as a model of design. Notice of registration was published on 17 August 2004.

The technique that produced this facade is jinzoseki arai-dashi, artificial stone with a washed finish: a mortar mixed with stone aggregate, applied, then washed back before it fully sets so the aggregate stands proud and the surface reads as stone. Ishioka's shopfronts owe their character to a local plasterer who specialised in it and who worked on several of the town's signboard buildings. Sources give his name in two forms, so it is left out here.

The point about that technique is what it made possible. A plasterer working in artificial stone can produce classical mouldings, cornices and capitals. A plasterer working in the traditional idiom of a storehouse produces a storehouse. That choice of technique explains why Ishioka's shop fronts went Western rather than staying in the Edo townhouse vocabulary, and Hiramatsu Riyoten, the earliest of them, set the direction.

Above the entrance the canopy carries acanthus leaves in the Corinthian manner. They are not archaeologically correct Corinthian, and that gap is the interest of the type: anonymous craftsmen reconstructing Western forms from what they had seen in books and photographs, using techniques they already knew.

The plan is small and direct. The barbershop occupies a space two and a half ken across and two and a half ken deep, roughly 4.5 metres each way, with three Japanese-style rooms arranged in a single line behind it. Alterations have been made over the years, but the register records that the building retains its original character inside and out to an unusual degree.

Still Open for Business

This is not a museum. Hiramatsu Riyoten has been cutting hair since 1928, when the current proprietor's grandmother opened it, and the family has run it across three generations. Local people call it the Western barbershop.

The floor inside is the detail specialists come for. It is tataki, the traditional rammed-earth technique, mixed with sawdust, and floors made this way have almost entirely vanished. The wall of barber mirrors and the barber chairs date from the opening as well. The building has passed through the 1929 fire, the war and the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 with these fittings intact.

Because it is a working shop, there is no admission charge and no viewing hours, and equally no right of entry for sightseeing. Customers see the interior. Anyone else should photograph the exterior from the street, which is unrestricted, and not attempt to look inside during business. A haircut is the honest way in.

Ishioka Station on the JR Joban Line is about 15 minutes away on foot. From Nakamachi-dori, turn west onto the side street near Komaru-dori; the shop is on the north side. It sits away from the main run of registered buildings, so it is often missed. The walking map from the station tourist office marks it. Kissaten Shiki, Sugaya Keshohin-ten, Morito Bunshiro Shoten, Jushichiya Hakimonoten and Hisamatsu Shoten are all within a short walk and make a coherent hour or two together.