What the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse is
The Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse is a late-Edo storehouse at Sakurai in Makabe, Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture, entered in the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 12 July 2005 under registration number 08-0191.
The surname reads Yaguchi. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the reading as yaguchi yoshie ke jūtaku dozō (谷口義衛家住宅土蔵), and the machine translation Taniguchi that once attached to this record is wrong.
The building went up somewhere between 1830 and 1867, in the closing decades of the Edo period, which makes it older than the plot it now occupies. Around 1892 the Yaguchi household moved onto this site, bringing the gate range with it, and the storehouse came too. Two structures on the compound carry separate registrations, and this is the smaller of them at 38 square metres.
It sits well inside the property, west of the storeroom in the gate range and south of the living quarters, its ridge running east to west. The frame measures 3 ken across the front, about 5.5 metres, and 2 ken deep, about 3.6 metres. Two storeys of Dozo-zukuri earthen-walled construction stand under a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles, entered on the long side in the Hirairi manner.
On the north face an earthen canopy 1 ken wide, about 1.8 metres, leans out to shelter the doorway. Japanese carpenters call a storehouse door and the covered ground before it the Tomae. The doorway itself, and the window in the east gable at second-floor level, are both fitted with double-leaf fire doors.
Why the building is on the national register
The Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse was registered under the criterion for buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country, the same criterion applied to the gate range on the same compound and to most of the registered stock in Makabe.
Sakuragawa City explains the town's abundance of earthen storehouses through a single event. A great fire in 1837 swept the settlement, and the rebuilding that followed turned it away from thatch and boards towards tile, plaster and earth. Merchants began putting up shop storehouses and household storehouses in numbers, and the city notes that the oldest buildings still standing in Makabe date from immediately after that fire. A storehouse assigned to the years 1830 to 1867 belongs to exactly that wave.
What the registration protects here is not a monument but a working outbuilding, kept because it still reads as part of a complete household arrangement. That is also why the size matters in the other direction. At 38 square metres this is a domestic storehouse, not one of the deep merchant blocks along the main street, and small storehouses of its kind were the first things to be pulled down when families modernised.
Their survival is not guaranteed. The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku damaged almost all of the traditional buildings in Makabe, and earthen-walled storehouses, heavy and brittle at the wall head, suffered particularly. Sakuragawa City has been working through disaster repairs on the town's historic fabric ever since.
Fireproofing you can read from outside
Everything distinctive about the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse comes back to keeping fire out. Earthen walls of this type are built up in layers over a bamboo lattice and finished in plaster, so the wall itself will not carry flame. The weak points are the openings, and each one has been dealt with.
The doorway takes double-leaf fire doors that swing shut against each other. Storehouse doors of this period are normally Tsuchido, timber cores packed and plastered until they weigh as much as the wall they close, which is why they hang on heavy pivots rather than ordinary hinges. The window in the east gable, high up at second-floor level, has the same arrangement in miniature.
The earthen canopy on the north face does a quieter job. Rain running down a plastered wall will eventually open it up, and the doorway is where water gets in fastest, so the canopy pushes the drip line clear of the threshold. A dry doorway is a doorway whose fire doors still close properly after a century.
Inside, the roof is framed by running sloping beams up from a tie beam carried across the middle of the span. It is a simple solution to a small building, and it leaves the second floor clear of posts. Nothing of that is visible from the road, but it explains why a storehouse of this footprint could take a full upper storey.
Visiting the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse
The compound at Sakurai 1 is a private home and the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse is closed. There are no opening hours, no admission charge and no interior access. Sakuragawa City asks that registered properties be viewed from the road and that visitors keep out of gardens and yards.
Manage expectations about what is actually visible. The national record places this storehouse behind the gate range and to the south of the living quarters, which means the view from the road is likely to be limited to the roof and part of a gable. The building to look for from the street is the long gate range; the storehouse is the reason to stand at an angle rather than square on.
Getting there: Sakuragawa-Chikusei on the Kita-Kanto Expressway is about 20 minutes by car, and Tsuchiura-kita about 50 minutes by way of Route 125 and Prefectural Route 41. Without a car, take the JR Mito Line to Iwase and a taxi for about 20 minutes, or come from Tsukuba Station by Tsukuba City bus to Tsukubasan-guchi in about 50 minutes and change there to a Sakuragawa City bus for about 20 minutes more. The town car park at Makabe Takajomachi, 279-1 Makabe, Makabe-cho, takes 65 vehicles.
Photography from the public road is fine. Late afternoon light rakes along an east-west ridge like this one and picks up the texture of the plaster where it has been patched, which a flat overhead sun will not show at all.
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Q&A
- Is the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse open to visitors, and what does it cost to see?
- It is not open. The compound is a private residence, there are no opening hours and no fee is charged. Sakuragawa City asks that registered buildings be looked at from the public road, and that visitors do not enter the grounds.
- How old is the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse, and has it always stood here?
- The national record dates it to the late Edo period, between 1830 and 1867, and states that it was moved to this site around 1892. It is therefore older than the compound it belongs to, and older than the gate range registered alongside it.
- What can actually be seen of the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse from the road?
- Not a great deal. The record places it behind the gate range and south of the living quarters, so the roof and part of a gable end are the likely extent of it. Visitors who want to understand the compound should read the gate range first and treat the storehouse as what stands behind it.
- Why does the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse have doors and windows fitted with double-leaf shutters?
- They are fire doors. An earthen storehouse is built to survive a fire in the buildings around it, and its openings are the weak point, so doorway and gable window alike are closed by heavy leaves that shut against one another. Makabe learned the lesson from the fire of 1837.
- How large is the Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse compared with the town's merchant storehouses?
- Considerably smaller. Its building area is 38 square metres, on a frame of 3 ken by 2 ken, which is a household storehouse rather than one of the deep shop storehouses that line the main street of the old town.
Basic Information
| Name | Yaguchi Yoshie Family Residence Storehouse |
|---|---|
| Location | Sakurai 1, Makabe-cho, Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) |
| Year Designated | Registered 12 July 2005 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Building area 38 square metres. Frame 3 ken wide (about 5.5 metres) and 2 ken deep (about 3.6 metres), with an earthen canopy 1 ken (about 1.8 metres) wide on the north face |
| Owner | Private owner (no owner name recorded in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public; stands within a private compound and is only partly visible from the road |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: 谷口義衛家住宅土蔵
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00004706
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: 谷口義衛家住宅長屋門及び主屋
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00004705
- Sakuragawa City: Makabe Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/education/bunkazai/city_bunkazai/kuni_bunkazai/page003423.html
- Sakuragawa City: The Townscape of Makabe
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/tourism_guide/learn/page000455.html
- Sakuragawa City: Walking Makabe, registered cultural property map (PDF)
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/data/doc/1487569963_doc_23_1.pdf
Last verified: 2026.09.09