Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse

A black-plastered storehouse built for dolls

Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse (祐月本店雛蔵, Yūgetsu Honten Hinagura) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse in Suehirocho, Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, built in 1916 (Taisho 5) and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 17, 2015 (Heisei 27). Its walls are finished in black plaster and its floor area is 53 square meters.

The building belongs to Yugetsu Honten, a doll shop founded in 1890 (Meiji 23) by the first Wada Yunosuke, who began by making and selling decorated hagoita battledores and hina dolls in the old Bakurōmachi quarter of Mito. In 1893 (Meiji 26) the business took premises in that same quarter, which is the district now called Suehirocho.

Hina dolls are the tiered display of court figures set out for the Girls' Day festival on 3 March. They are stored for eleven months of the year and brought out for one, which is why a doll merchant needed a building of this kind: dry, dark, thick-walled, and large enough to hold stock that only moves in season.

The date is not a matter of inference. An inscription in ink on the ridge beam gives 2 October 1916 and names the first Wada Yunosuke as the man who raised it.

Why Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse is on the register

Registration was granted under the criterion for buildings that contribute to the historical landscape of the country. Mito City's own assessment is more specific than that phrase suggests. The city notes that two sets of earthen doors survive in good condition, that the timber frame has not been altered, and that the circumstances of the 1916 construction are documented, and it calls the building valuable as one of the few in Mito that still convey the layout of a merchant household at its height.

That last point carries weight in this city. Mito lost the bulk of its old commercial fabric in the air raid of 1945, and further stock was damaged in the earthquake of 2011. Storehouses of the Taisho period are not common survivals here.

The term to be exact about is registration rather than designation. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property is protected under the register created in 1996, a lighter framework than the designation system. The obligation on the owner is to keep the building recognisable while continuing to use it, and Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse is used: it now serves as the company's doll exhibition room.

The construction is Dozo-zukuri, a timber frame encased in thick earth and finished in plaster, with the frame concealed rather than left exposed. The roof is Kirizuma-zukuri gabled and covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles, and the ridge runs north to south. Inside, the roof is framed as a Wagoya structure.

What to look at

Begin at the base. The foundation is laid in coursed blocks of Oya stone, the soft green-grey tuff quarried north of here at Utsunomiya, and it gives the building a pale plinth beneath walls that are otherwise almost black. The Shikkui plaster of the walls is tinted black, a finish that took repeated coats and a good deal of labour.

Run your eye along the eaves. A raised plaster band, called a hachimaki, is carried around the building just below the roof line, tying the four walls together visually.

Then look at the two faces that open. The east side and the south gable end, the side that faces the main house, each have a doorway at ground level and a window above it on the upper floor. Each of those upper windows is given a small hood carried on Mochiokuri brackets. It is a detail that costs money and does nothing for storage, and it is the clearest sign that the owner wanted the building to look substantial from the street.

The doorways retain their Tsuchido, the heavy earth-cored doors that gave a storehouse its fire resistance, hung at the Tomae entrance recess. Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse runs six Ken along the ridge, which is large for a town storehouse, and the execution throughout is heavy and careful rather than showy.

One further building on the plot is worth knowing about, though it is not registered: the main house of 1931 (Showa 6), which the company now uses as its display floor.

Visiting Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse

The storehouse can be visited, and it is one of the few registered properties of its type in Mito where the interior is open at all. Viewing is by reservation only. The company takes bookings by telephone or by the enquiry form on its website, and accepts visitors between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

The storehouse is generally closed on Saturdays and Sundays even though the shop itself trades those days, so a weekday visit is the reliable choice. The shop is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Reservations and enquiries go to 029-222-1117.

Inside, the building works as a doll exhibition room, so what a visitor sees is a Taisho storehouse in use rather than an emptied shell. The company also keeps a collection of Mito metalwork, chiefly sword fittings assembled by the second Wada Yunosuke, in a separate room on the premises.

Photography inside is at the company's discretion; ask when you book rather than on arrival. Yugetsu Honten Hina Doll Storehouse lies about 2.5 kilometers northwest of Mito Station on the JR Joban Line. Ibaraki Kotsu buses from the north exit of the station reach the Suehirocho Nichome stop in roughly 10 minutes, and the shop is a short walk from there. A taxi from the station takes about 10 minutes.