Yoshida Family Storehouse

A Small White Box on a Very Long Stone

The Yoshida Family Residence Storehouse (吉田家住宅土蔵, Yoshidake Jūtaku Dozō) is a two-story plastered storehouse of around 1875 in the Minamibeppu district of Chiran, Minamikyūshū City, Kagoshima Prefecture, entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 2007. It stands toward the east of the middle of the family compound, close beside the main house, and measures three and a half ken along the ridge by two and a half deep, with a registered building area of 35 square meters.

The building type is dozō: a timber frame packed with earth and finished in lime plaster, thick enough to hold out fire and damp. This one carries a gabled roof of pantiles running north to south, and is entered from the south under the gable rather than from the long side. Windows open on the east and the north. The plaster is carried all the way up and over, sealing the wall into the eaves so that no timber shows on the outside.

Then look down. The base is coursed cut stone, and one of the blocks in it runs to 3.8 meters. The Agency for Cultural Affairs bothers to mention that stone in its official description, which is unusual for a building this small.

Registered as Part of a Landscape

Registration took effect on 5 December 2007, with public notice on 19 December; the register number is 46-0058. Of the four criteria available, the one applied was that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country.

That criterion explains the shape of what happened in Minamibeppu that day. The Yoshida storehouse was not registered alone. Eight structures across three neighboring households went onto the register together: the Yasuda family's main house, two storehouses and its gate with stone walls; the Matsushita family's main house, storehouse and stone walls; and this storehouse. The Agency was recognizing a settlement, not a set of individual buildings, and the stone walls appearing twice in that list are the reason.

Registration is also a different legal instrument from designation. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property sits below an Important Cultural Property or National Treasure: the system dates from 1996, changes are notified rather than approved, and the owner keeps the building in ordinary use. For working farm buildings still owned by families, that is the whole point. Nothing here has been converted into a museum.

One detail the register makes plain: only the storehouse of the Yoshida property carries the status. The main house next to it is not listed. The Agency's records give no reason, and the contrast with the neighboring households, where several structures were registered at once, is simply what the documents show.

Why the Stone Matters in Chiran

Chiran is a place where people built with stone as a matter of course. The preserved samurai quarter a few kilometers away is defined by its walls: high, tightly jointed, cut and laid with a precision that reads as fortification as much as boundary. Those walls are the reason the district was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and the reason its gardens carry national Place of Scenic Beauty status.

The Yoshida storehouse belongs to the same habit of mind, in a farming setting rather than a samurai one. A 3.8 meter stone in the footing of a 35 square meter building is not a structural necessity. It is a decision about how the base should look and how long it should last, made by masons who cut and moved large stone routinely.

The plaster above it does a plainer job. A farming household stored rice, seed, tools, documents and valuables in the dozō, and the reason to spend money on thick earthen walls was fire: in a settlement of thatched houses, one spark could take everything. Sealing the plaster into the eaves removes the exposed timber where flame would otherwise catch. Southern Kyushu adds a second argument, since typhoons come through most years and the storehouse is the building that stays standing.

Visiting: Not Here, But Nearby

The Yoshida Family Residence Storehouse is privately owned and closed to the public. Kagoshima Prefecture's register lists the owner as a private individual; there is no reception, no parking, no admission and no arrangement for viewing. The same applies to the Yasuda and Matsushita properties registered alongside it. These are homes, so please stay off the approaches and do not photograph into the grounds.

The Chiran samurai quarter, roughly ten to fifteen minutes away by car, is where to go instead, and the stone walls there make the point about local masonry better than any description. The street itself is free to walk. The seven gardens of the Chiran Samurai Residence Gardens open from 9:00 to 17:00 with no closing days, at 530 yen for adults and 320 yen for children, and a relocated Chiran-type futatsuya farmhouse stands midway along the street, opened up so its plan can be read from outside. Photography along the street is unrestricted, though the residences behind the hedges are lived in.

Buses from Kagoshima-Chūō Station reach the Bukeyashiki-iriguchi stop in about seventy to seventy-five minutes; the stop is a minute from the street. By car it is about ten minutes from the Chiran interchange on the Ibusuki Skyline. A half day covers the district comfortably, and the tea fields on the approach roads are worth the drive in their own right.