Sendaiya

What Is Sendaiya?

Sendaiya (仙臺屋, also written 仙台屋) is a merchant townhouse compound on Chuo-dori in Tono, Iwate Prefecture, where six buildings led by an 1882 store and main house were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan on July 8, 2008.

The name is a yagō, the trading name by which a merchant household was known, and Sendaiya is pronounced "sen-dai-ya." The six registered structures are the store and main house, a former grain storehouse, the front storehouse, a former unhulled rice storehouse, a toilet and a warehouse. Standing one behind another on a single deep plot, they let you read a Tono merchant property in full, street-facing shop and back yard alike.

The Six Buildings of Sendaiya in Order of Age

All six Sendaiya buildings entered the national register in the 60th round of registrations, under numbers 03-0068 through 03-0073. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates them as follows.

• Former grain storehouse: early Meiji period
• Store and main house: 1882, renovated in 1960 and relocated in 2006
• Front storehouse: 1888
• Former unhulled rice storehouse: 1892
• Warehouse: 1897
• Toilet: late Taisho period

In other words, the house and its storage buildings were essentially complete within the Meiji era, and the toilet came last, in the late Taisho period. The store and main house is the only one registered as a model of architectural form; the other five were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape.

How the Sendaiya Compound Is Laid Out

The Sendaiya plot is a long, narrow strip running north from the street, the classic shape of a Machiya lot. Read together, the Agency's descriptions place the buildings in a nearly straight line running back from the street.

The store and main house fronts the street at the southern end. The former grain storehouse sits behind it, toward the east. The front storehouse stands north of the main house across an inner courtyard, and beyond a work yard comes the former unhulled rice storehouse. The toilet stands between that storehouse and the warehouse, and the long warehouse closes off the northern end of the lot.

The three storehouses share a family resemblance: each is a two-story Dozo-zukuri building with a gabled, gable-entry roof set as a separate Okiyane over the clay body, and white Shikkui plaster trimmed in black. The finishes differ in the details. Two of them have walls that thicken toward the ground, while the rice storehouse has a Namako-kabe tile base. Each building has its own page on this site.

A Castle Town and a Neighboring Domain's Name

Tono grew up as the castle town of the Tono Nanbu clan, a branch holding 12,000 koku within the Morioka domain, at a strategic point on the border with the Sendai domain, as Tono City describes it. The Sendaiya name borrows the name of that neighboring domain's capital, but no public record found for this article explains how the name arose or what trades the household followed over the years.

Even the main house at Sendaiya has a layered history. Its eastern four bays were once a separate inn, now joined to the older core as one building, and the whole was renovated in 1960 and relocated in 2006. What you see today is a Meiji merchant house with Showa and Heisei work layered on top.

Visiting Sendaiya

Sendaiya is privately owned, and no public opening or interior tours were announced as of September 2026. Visitors can see the street facade of the store and main house from Chuo-dori; the storehouses and warehouse stand deep inside the lot, so little of them can be seen from outside. There is no official guidance on photography either, so please keep residents and customers out of your pictures.

The nearest station is Tono on the JR Kamaishi Line. The Sendaiya main house lies about 300 m south-southwest of the station in a straight line, roughly a 5 to 7 minute walk.