The shop with the black walls
Konishi Misegura is an early Meiji period shop building of earthen storehouse construction at 114 Uramachi in Yuki City, Ibaraki Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 9 February 2005.
Yuki's old quarter still holds a good number of misegura, shops built with the thick fireproof earthen walls that would normally enclose a warehouse. Nearly all of them present a white shikkui plaster face to the street. Konishi Misegura does not. Its walls are finished in black plaster, and the whole front reads as a single dark mass. On a bright day the contrast with its white-walled neighbours is at its sharpest.
The trade here was ironmongery. Yuki City records that the Konishi family branched off from the Konishi sake brewery in 1875 to set up a copper and iron dealership, and the house has sold hardware ever since. The present company, Konishi Co., Ltd., is its descendant.
The building faces south, turning its long side to the road in the hirairi manner of a machiya. The roof is a gable, kirizuma-zukuri, covered in sangawara-buki pantiles, with a tiled pentice projecting over the street front. The frontage measures 6 ken and the depth 3 ken and a half, giving a registered floor area of 88 square metres. The ground floor holds an office and shop, the upper floor a zashiki reception room, a study and storage, over 2 storeys.
A building with no document to date it
The criterion under which Konishi Misegura was registered is contribution to the historic landscape of the nation, and its registration number is 08-0166. Twelve buildings in Yuki went onto the register on the same day, which says something about how the assessment was framed: the unit of value was the street, not any one facade.
When the building went up is not actually settled. No munafuda ridge tablet survives, and no ink inscription either. Yuki City states that the shop is said to have been built in 1875, the year the business was founded, and is careful to add that the only support for this is the archaic character of the form and the timber. The Agency for Cultural Affairs enters the period as early Meiji and gives 1868 to 1911 in the year column, the full span of the era. The gap between tradition and physical evidence sits right there in the two records.
One piece of that physical evidence is the ceiling height. The upper floor of Konishi Misegura is low. Taking this together with the fact that the ridge, before the roof was recovered, was no different from that of an ordinary townhouse, Yuki City calls the building unusual among the surviving misegura of the town and reads both its form and its date as early. A low upper storey belongs to a different way of thinking from the later misegura, which lift their storehouse reception rooms high and make a display of them.
Registration is a lighter instrument than designation: owners notify rather than seek permission for most changes. That lightness is much of the reason Konishi Misegura can serve as a working company office and hold cultural property status at the same time.
What to look for at Konishi Misegura
Stand in front of it and the difference between the two floors is immediate. The ground floor opens: roughly 2 ken at the western end form a projecting bay window set on a low sill, and sliding glazed doors fill the rest. This is the face of a shop.
The upper floor closes. Two latticed windows with moulded surrounds sit almost flush in the wall, one lighting the study on the east, the other the reception room on the west. Their widths do not match, because the rooms behind them are not the same size. No shutter box has been fitted beside either opening, so nothing projects from the wall and the black plaster runs on unbroken.
The shopfront below has been altered heavily. Aluminium sliding doors have gone in and the original street-facing arrangement is gone. What Yuki City describes as well preserved is the main structural timber and the interior of the upper floor. Of what a passer-by can actually see, in other words, it is largely the top half that still carries the original design. Look up.
Other misegura registered on the same day stand along the same stretch of Uramachi. How the black reads against a run of white walls is not something a single facade will tell you. Step back and take in the whole street, and the place of Konishi Misegura within it becomes much easier to judge.
Visiting Konishi Misegura
Konishi Misegura is still in daily use by Konishi Co., Ltd. as an office and shop, and it is not a visitor attraction. The interior is not open, there is no booking system, and no admission is charged. What can be seen is the exterior, from the public road.
Neither Yuki City nor the Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education publishes any information about opening the building, as checked on 8 September 2026. That also means no contact point for arranging access has been made public, so the sensible approach is to look from outside and leave it there. Photography from the road is unrestricted and there are no set hours, though the doorway belongs to a working business and is best treated as one.
The nearest station is Yuki on the JR Mito Line, about 10 minutes on foot north from the north exit. Yuki City points visitors towards Yuki Station Street and Omachi Street as the places where the earthen-walled buildings remain, and walking north from the station brings you past Konishi Misegura without any need to navigate.
A stone tablet carrying an explanatory text stands at the front of the building, but its surface has weathered badly and it is hard to read. Checking the registration details before you go will make it clearer what is worth looking at once you are standing there.
Q&A
- Can you go inside Konishi Misegura?
- No. The building is in use by Konishi Co., Ltd. as an office and shop, and the interior is not open to the public. The exterior can be seen freely from the public road at any time.
- Is there an admission fee or a booking system for Konishi Misegura?
- Neither. Since viewing is limited to the exterior from the street, there is no reception desk and no charge. Photography from the public road is not restricted.
- When was Konishi Misegura built?
- The date is not fixed, because no ridge tablet or ink inscription survives. Yuki City reports that it is said to have been built in 1875, when the business was founded, supported by the archaic form and timber. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the period as early Meiji, within a span of 1868 to 1911.
- Why are the walls of Konishi Misegura black?
- The outer walls were finished in black lime plaster rather than the usual white. Among the many white-walled misegura of Yuki, this gives the building a heavy, single-toned front that stands apart.
- How do you get to Konishi Misegura from Yuki Station?
- It is about 10 minutes on foot north from the north exit of Yuki Station on the JR Mito Line. The address is 114 Uramachi, and other misegura registered on the same day stand along the same street.
Basic Information
| Name | Konishi Misegura (小西見世蔵) |
|---|---|
| Location | 114 Uramachi, Oaza Yuki, Yuki City, Ibaraki Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (registration number 08-0166) |
| Year Designated | Registered on 9 February 2005 (Heisei 17) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Floor area 88 square metres; frontage 6 ken, depth 3 ken and a half; 2 storeys, earthen storehouse construction with a tiled gable roof |
| Owner | Private individual, as published by the Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education |
| Public Access | Interior closed. Exterior freely visible from the public road |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Konishi Misegura
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00004506
- Yuki City, Registered Tangible Cultural Properties: Konishi Co., Ltd.
- https://www.city.yuki.lg.jp/kosodate-kyouiku/shougaigakushuu/bunkazai/bunkazai/tourokuyuukei/page003229.html
- Yuki City, list of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.yuki.lg.jp/kosodate-kyouiku/shougaigakushuu/bunkazai/bunkazai/tourokuyuukei/page003226.html
- Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education, Cultural Properties of Ibaraki: Konishi Misegura
- https://kyoiku.pref.ibaraki.jp/bunkazai/bunkazai-registered-6143/
- Yuki City, tourism information: the earthen-walled streetscape of Yuki
- https://www.city.yuki.lg.jp/kankou/yuki100/yukichiku/page000469.html
Last verified: 2026.09.08