A Shop That Has Moved Twice and Changed Trades
The former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten shop and residence (旧越前屋雨谷商店店舗兼主屋, also written Echizenya Amayashōten) is a single-storey timber merchant building of 1924 that now stands in the precinct of Seiganji temple at Uchimodori in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, and it was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 2 May 2017.
Very few buildings have three biographies. This one does.
It began as the premises of a wholesale druggist, spent roughly seventy years as a farmhouse, and now serves as a Buddhist hall. Along the way it travelled about ten kilometres inland, was taken apart twice, and shrank. The timber, meanwhile, is older than any of these chapters.
The Edo-period business
The house called Echizen-ya Yozaemon was founded in the mid-Edo period by Amaya Yozaemon, personal name Gonzaburō, who lived from 1694 to 1750 and came from Toba Araimachi in Echizen province, in what is now Fukui Prefecture. He dealt wholesale in medicines, sugar and general goods, and he wrote haikai verse under the pen name Minkyō.
The shop stood at the front gate of Shōjōkōji, the head temple of the Ji school of Pure Land Buddhism universally known in Fujisawa as Yugyōji, beside the bridge now called Yugyōji-bashi. This was the commercial heart of Fujisawa-shuku, the sixth post station on the Tōkaidō highway. The shop appears in nineteenth-century woodblock prints of the town.
Earthquake, and a new building
In 1919 the sixth-generation head rebuilt the premises on a grand scale, with a storehouse-shop, an inner storehouse and living quarters in a row. A photograph taken on 2 January that year shows a newly erected electricity pole and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle used for deliveries.
Four years later the Great Kantō Earthquake brought the whole complex down. Fujisawa's old district recorded a collapse rate above sixty per cent. The buildings escaped fire but not ruin, and the family sold the land.
In 1924 the seventh-generation head, Amaya Yozaemon, personal name Zentarō, who lived from 1899 to 1988, built a new shop and residence on a sunny corner site on Yugyō-dōri, the street that is now National Route 467. Salvaged timber from the collapsed buildings went into it, which is why a building dated 1924 contains members cut in the Edo period.
What the Building Was Registered For
Registered Tangible Cultural Property is a lighter legal category than Important Cultural Property. Introduced in 1996 for buildings more than fifty years old, it asks owners to notify the authorities before major alterations and offers tax relief in return, instead of imposing the strict controls and heavy state funding that come with designation. It exists to keep ordinary useful buildings standing.
This one was registered under the criterion covering structures that serve as a model of design, with the number 14-0227.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs assessment focuses on the shop half. Because the original site was a corner plot, the earth-floored doma and its glazed screens were wrapped around two sides at a right angle, with the merchant's counter set within. The heavy purlins of the projecting eaves and the thick timbers of the pent roof are read as characteristic of the reconstruction years after the earthquake, when ordinary timber houses were built more robustly than before. The residential half preserves two good eight-mat reception rooms.
Fujisawa has preserved farmhouses. Merchant houses are rarer, and a surviving shop-residence from the medicine and sugar trade is unusual nationally.
What to Look For
The eaves
The shop section uses segai construction, sometimes written with characters meaning boat oar. Bracket arms project outward from the side pillars and carry a purlin at their tips, pushing the eaves well beyond the wall line. Below them runs a further bracketed pent roof. The eaves are deep, yet the room behind stays bright because glass encloses the doma.
The survey conducted for the registration application found no other example of this arrangement surviving in Fujisawa.
The ridge ends
Ridge-end tiles of the type known as bintsuki kumotsuki marutate oni carry the family crest, two crossed hawk feathers within a circle. The roof itself is metal over an irimoya form with a mukuri hafu, a gable board with a convex outward curve rather than the concave sweep more usual on temple work. It is a subtle profile and easy to walk past.
Four cedar doors
Inside, four single-plank cedar doors separate the ten-mat shop room from the corridor. They came from the Edo-period Echizen-ya premises, were kept when the 1924 building went up, and were finally fitted during the 1938 move so that the shop side and the reception rooms could connect. Their pulls are heavy copper in an elongated melon shape.
The inner reception room
The eight-mat inner room has a formal alcove with a side recess. The round post to the left of the alcove is betel palm, the square post to the right is rosewood, and the alcove floorboard is zelkova. The staggered shelves in the side recess rest on natural unworked timber and end in a carved stop shaped like a breaking wave. These are expensive choices, made for a merchant family receiving guests.
Note also the yukimi shōji with fine-lattice work dividing doma from shop room, and the nekoma shōji along the veranda edge. Both were added by the farming family, not the merchants.
The Second Move, and the Building Today
The Shōwa depression closed the shop. In 1937 Mori Rinzō, born 1860 and three times headman of Goshomi village, bought the single-storey building for a thousand yen to replace a farmhouse lost to fire, and in 1938 carpenters re-erected it on the Mori land at Uchimodori. He chose it partly because it was cheaper than building new and partly because he judged the Edo-period timber inside it worth having.
The Mori family held it for seven decades. By 2010 the underfloor structure had decayed badly and demolition was decided. Seiganji, whose abbot had known the house since childhood through parish visits, took it on instead, saying plainly that it would be a waste to destroy a building of that history. A temple-carpentry firm dismantled it in September 2010, the members were stored on temple ground, re-erection began in 2012, and the project was completed in 2014 at a reduced size of about 138 square metres.
It is now the Yakushidō, housing a wooden Yakushi triad from the defunct Tōkōji temple in the same village. The central image is single-block construction with carved rather than inlaid eyes and is thought to date to the mid-sixteenth century; the flanking bodhisattvas are Edo-period replacements. The two eight-mat rooms serve as the Shōwa Bunkakan, a hall used for tea gatherings, flower arrangement, doll displays at the March festival and funerary occasions. A framed inscription by the historian Handō Kazutoshi was hung above the south entrance in 2016.
Visiting
Seiganji is a Sōtō Zen temple founded in 1613, and its precinct is open. The exterior of the hall can be seen and photographed freely. The interior is generally accessible only to those attending one of the events held there, so checking the temple's schedule beforehand is the practical approach. There is a car park.
By public transport, take a Kanachū bus from the west exit of Shōnandai Station, served by the Odakyū Enoshima Line, the Yokohama Municipal Subway and the Sōtetsu Izumino Line, towards Ayase depot via Keio University and Miyahara, and get off at Dō-no-mae, three minutes on foot. Buses towards Ayase depot also run from the north exit of Tsujidō Station on the JR Tōkaidō Line. Some services stop directly at Seiganji-mae. Frequencies are modest, so check timetables. Keio University's Shōnan Fujisawa Campus lies about a kilometre to the east.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Kanagawa
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Former Echizenya Ametani Shoten Store and Main Building
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Q&A
- Where is the former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten building, and how do I get there?
- It stands in the precinct of Seiganji temple at 1119 Uchimodori, Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture. Take a Kanachū bus towards Ayase depot from the west exit of Shōnandai Station or the north exit of Tsujidō Station and alight at Dō-no-mae, about three minutes on foot, or at Seiganji-mae where services allow. A car park is available.
- Can visitors go inside the former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten building?
- The exterior can be viewed freely from the temple precinct. The interior, used as the Yakushidō and the Shōwa Bunkakan, is normally open to those attending events such as tea gatherings, flower arrangement classes and the March doll display. Check the temple's schedule in advance.
- Why does the former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten building stand at a temple rather than on a shopping street?
- It has been moved twice. Built in 1924 on Yugyō-dōri in central Fujisawa, it was sold after the Shōwa depression and re-erected in 1938 as a farmhouse at Uchimodori. When demolition was decided in 2010, Seiganji acquired it and rebuilt it in the temple precinct, with the work completed in 2014.
- What did Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten actually sell?
- The business began in the mid-Edo period as a wholesaler of medicines, sugar and general goods near the gate of Yugyōji temple. An advertisement in a 1933 local gazetteer lists sugar, paper, cement, wall materials, paint, patent medicines, dyes and pigments, cosmetics, soap and sundries, and records agencies for matches, camellia oil and soap across Kanagawa.
- Is the former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten building an Important Cultural Property?
- No. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, register number 14-0227, a lighter category created in 1996 for buildings over fifty years old. Owners notify the authorities before major alterations and receive tax relief, in contrast to the strict controls attached to Important Cultural Properties and National Treasures.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten shop and residence / 旧越前屋雨谷商店店舗兼主屋 |
|---|---|
| Location | 1119 Uchimodori, Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture (precinct of Seiganji temple) |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), register no. 14-0227; criterion: a model of design |
| Year Designated | Registered and notified 2 May 2017 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Single-storey timber frame, steel-sheet roof, floor area 138 m². Built 1924; moved 1938 and 2014 |
| Owner | Seiganji (religious corporation) |
| Public Access | Precinct open; exterior freely viewable. Interior generally accessible during temple events |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten shop and residence
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00011486
- Okayama Rika, On the preservation and use of historic structures: the case of the former Echizenya Amayashouten building, Journal of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Tokyo City University, vol. 10, 2017
- https://www.tcu.ac.jp/tcucms/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/vol10_01.pdf
- Cultural Heritage Online: former Echizen-ya Amaya Shōten shop and residence
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/274772
- Shōnan Heritage Project: Seiganji Yakushidō (Shōwa Bunkakan)
- https://www.city.fujisawa.kanagawa.jp/bunkazai/press/kyuetizenyaamayasyouten.html
- Fujisawa City: cultural properties
- https://www.city.fujisawa.kanagawa.jp/bunkakanko/bunka/bunkazai/index.html
Last verified: 2026.08.13