Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse

What Is the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse?

The Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse (鈴木家住宅店蔵, Suzuki-ke Jūtaku Misegura) is a 2-story reinforced-concrete shop storehouse built in 1931 in Nakamachi, Komatsu City, Ishikawa Prefecture, and it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2012.

It is a small building attached to the north side of the family's main house. The plan measures 5.2 meters east-west by 4.3 meters north-south, a building area of just 22 square meters. The roof is flat, and a low parapet wall runs around its edge.

A misegura is the storehouse a merchant kept beside the shop, where stock and account books could be protected from fire. The Suzukis traded in silk thread; Komatsu's Board of Education records that three generations ran the business on this lot, beginning in 1907 and continuing until around 1975. The Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse was their safeguard against fire, set right beside the place where the trade was done.

Why the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the building as a shop storehouse designed with fire in mind, because it was a rebuilding after a great fire. That fire broke out on March 28, 1930, and swept the districts north of the river in central Komatsu, Nakamachi among them. By the city's count, 700 buildings burned to the ground and another 120 were partly destroyed. Komatsu City also notes that when the quarter was rebuilt, storehouses were placed along the rear property lines to slow any future blaze.

The following year the Suzukis built in reinforced concrete. Yet they did not let the building look modern. The walls were finished in white Shikkui lime plaster and the lower walls faced with Tomuro stone, a stone of the Kaga region, so that at a glance the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse reads as a traditional Dozo-zukuri earthen storehouse. A fire-resistant new structure wears the dress of the street.

Only one element openly declares the Western taste of the period. The parapet on the east face, the side toward the road, rises into a gable-like point, which the Board of Education describes as a touch borrowed from Western-style buildings. Fire safety, respect for the streetscape and a merchant's sense of presentation all fit into this one small building, and that combination underlies its registration for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

What to Look For at the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse

Face east. From the street, look up at the roofline: it runs flat until the east parapet climbs into a sharp peak against the white wall. Step to one side and you can confirm that the peak exists on this face alone.

Then bring your eye down to where the stone facing meets the plaster. The hard joint lines of the stone against the smooth white wall are there to suggest an earthen storehouse; behind them, the structure is concrete, with nothing of a dozo's thick clay walls.

Notice the scale as well. At 5.2 by 4.3 meters, the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse is dwarfed by the main house it leans against. The tiled hip-and-gable roof next door and this flat concrete box were both built in 1931, and the two make an unexpected pairing on a single corner.

Visiting the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse

Neither the Agency for Cultural Affairs nor Komatsu City lists any interior opening of the Suzuki Family Residence Shop Storehouse (checked September 2026). Treat it as part of a private home: view it from the public street, do not enter the property, and keep photography brief. The peaked east parapet faces the road, so it can be seen without leaving the pavement.

Walk northwest from the west exit of Komatsu Station, a stop on the Hokuriku Shinkansen and the IR Ishikawa Railway, and you reach Nakamachi in about 10 minutes; the storehouse stands just north of the main house on the southeast corner of a lot on Nakamachi-dōri. There is no charge to view it from the street.