Former Oji Family Residence Takakura

A Raised Granary on Amami Ōshima

The Former Taishi Family Takakura (旧大司家住宅高倉, Kyū Taishi-ke Jūtaku Takakura) is an early Taishō-period raised granary in Sedome, Tatsugō Town, Ōshima District, Kagoshima Prefecture, entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 7 August 2009. It stands on the grounds of the town's lifelong learning centre on Amami Ōshima, the middle building in a row of three granaries of the same type.

A takakura is a storehouse lifted clear of the ground on four posts, the standard grain store of the Amami Islands and one of the shapes that defined the look of a village here. The floor sits above head height. Below it is open ground, shaded and swept by wind, which villagers used as a work space.

The dimensions surprise most first-time visitors. This one measures 2.4 metres in each direction, giving a building area of 5.7 square metres, smaller than a modern parking space. The whole structure is timber under a hipped thatched roof, and the four supports are round posts rather than the squared timbers used in most Japanese buildings.

That roundness is not decoration. A rat climbing a round post has nothing to grip and no corner to work with, and the smooth surface stops it well before the floorboards. Rice and other dry goods spent months up there, well out of reach.

Three Granaries, One Registration Day

The Taishi granary was registered on the same day as its two neighbours. At the west end stands the Former Iwakiri Family Takakura, slightly larger at 2.5 metres square and 6.0 square metres, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes in more structural detail: round posts tied with waist rails, and members called menuki and kokonotsugi carried across the top, the latter curving upward at both ends. The Former Arimura Shōji Takakura, from the early Shōwa period, closes the row at the east end.

The Agency notes that the Taishi granary follows almost the same form as the Iwakiri one and calls it a typical example of the type. Placed side by side, the three make the local pattern legible in a way that a single building never could, and small differences in proportion and workmanship stand out against the shared template.

All three were registered under the criterion for buildings that serve as a model of design. Registration is a lighter instrument than designation as a National Treasure or an Important Cultural Property. It was introduced in 1996 to protect the vast stock of nineteenth and twentieth century buildings that were disappearing before the designation system could reach them, and it leaves owners free to repair and use their buildings, with notification required for major changes.

Both the dating and the moves matter for how the building should be read. The Agency records construction in the early Taishō era, between 1912 and 1925, a relocation around 1984, and a second relocation in 2008 that brought it to its present site. A takakura stands on posts rather than foundations, which is exactly what makes moving one practical. Local sources record that the buildings were dismantled and reassembled rather than lost when the land around them changed use.

How the Building Was Used

The Agency's account divides the work between two levels. Grain and other foodstuffs that spoil in damp were kept in the raised chamber. Hulling rice and similar tasks went on in the shade underneath. Tourism material from the town adds that the space above stays warm in winter and cool in summer, and that the ground beneath doubled as a place to rest between jobs and as somewhere for children to play.

Thatch and a ventilated floor do a great deal of work in this climate. Amami sits in the subtropics, with heavy rain, high humidity and a typhoon season that arrives every year without fail. Rice stored at ground level in a sealed building would sweat and rot. Raised on posts, under a thick thatched roof that sheds water fast and insulates against heat, it keeps.

Villages often had several granaries clustered together away from the houses, a grouping known locally as borekura, sited to reduce fire risk and to sit near the fields. Rice cultivation on Amami declined through the postwar decades under national acreage-reduction policy, and many granaries lost their purpose. A good number of the survivors were preserved for their value to the community and to visitors, which is essentially the story of these three.

Visiting the Granaries

The three granaries stand outdoors in Tōshime Park, opened on 28 March 2019 on the grounds of the Tatsugō Town Lifelong Learning Center, known as Ryūgakukan, opposite the town hall. The park is open ground, so the granaries can be seen and photographed at any time without charge or booking. The town asks visitors not to drink, smoke, cycle, skateboard or play ball games in the park.

Ryūgakukan itself is worth the stop. Its permanent exhibition, titled the Amami Tatsugō Island Museum, covers the history, culture and daily life of the area, and the centre has run special exhibitions including one on Saigō Takamori and his son Kikujirō. Saigō spent part of his exile on Amami and married Aikana here, which gives the town a strong claim on that story.

The centre opens from 9:00 to 22:00 on weekdays and 9:00 to 17:00 on Sundays, with last entry to the exhibition room at 16:30, and closes over the new year period. Admission to the exhibition room is 300 yen for adults and 100 yen for elementary and junior high school students. Parking is available. The telephone number is 0997-62-3110.

Amami Airport is roughly thirty minutes away by car, and central Naze about twenty minutes. Tatsugō is also the home of the Tatsugō pattern in Ōshima tsumugi silk, and the Akina Aratsu ritual, a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, takes place elsewhere in the same town, so the granaries fit naturally into a wider day.