Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop

About the Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop

The Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop (森山家住宅旧作業場, Moriyama-ke Jūtaku Kyū-sagyōba) is a timber workshop of the late Edo period (1830 to 1867) in Kajiki-chō, Aira City, Kagoshima Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 2, 2007. The Moriyama family of iron founders called it the nabegura, the pot store.

The Moriyama workshop stands behind the main house. It is a single-storey timber building under a corrugated slate roof, with a footprint of 80 square meters. Its outer walls are clad in corrugated iron, so from outside it could pass for a modern shed. Its age lies in the frame inside.

A Building from the Shūseikan?

Family tradition holds that the Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop was built from a building of the first Shūseikan, the industrial complex that the Satsuma lord Shimazu Nariakira founded at Iso in Kagoshima in 1851. The Moriyamas helped cast cannon there, so the story has some grounding.

The first Shūseikan buildings burned during the Anglo-Satsuma War of 1863. What survives at Iso today belongs to the second phase, rebuilt afterward by Shimazu Hisamitsu and his son Tadayoshi. The Aira City Board of Education points out that if the tradition is true, this workshop would be the only surviving building from the first phase of the Shūseikan project.

The city stops short of saying it is true. The posts are a mix of old and new timber, and the building was raised from a low structure to a taller one at some point. Because of these later alterations, the city's leaflet says, the move from the Shūseikan cannot be proven. Its own suggestion is that the family may have acquired posts from Shūseikan buildings when it built a new workshop.

The Frame of the Moriyama Workshop

The Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop as a model of architectural form, and the reason is the structure rather than the exterior. The walls were re-clad in iron sheeting, but much of the old timber frame survives.

The way it is framed is unusual. A heavy ridge beam, the jimunegi, runs beneath the ridge; sloping Nobori-bari rafter beams rest on it, and short moyazuka posts stand on those beams to carry the roof purlins. The Agency describes this as a distinctive framing method. Inside, stand on the floor and follow the sloping beams up to the short posts above them.

Look closely at the older posts too. Some still carry the marks of a chōna, the curved adze used to dress timber by hand, and the leaflet says these may date back to the late Edo period and the first Shūseikan. The rippled surfaces left by the blade sit next to the flat faces of later, machine-sawn wood.

Visiting the Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop

The Moriyama Family Residence Former Workshop now serves as an exhibition room. Panels explain the family's links with the Shūseikan and the commercial history of Kajiki, and casting molds and iron slag excavated on the south side of the site are on display.

The interior can be seen on a booked tour led by a city staff member or a volunteer history guide. The city has not published a photography policy, so check when you book. Booking details and directions are on the page for the Moriyama Family Residence as a whole.