Igarashi Shoten No. 1 Warehouse: Mortar Scored to Pass for Stone
Walk to the back of a merchant's plot in central Hadano and you find a small two-storey timber storehouse, 27 square metres of floor area, facing south from the middle of the rear yard. Its walls are plastered in mortar. Someone then took a tool and cut horizontal and vertical lines into the surface while it was still workable, so that the finished wall reads as coursed stone blocks. It is not stone. It never was.
This is the No. 1 Warehouse of Igarashi Shoten, a shop that dealt in aramono (household hardware), sundries and dried goods. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as timber-framed, two storeys, built in the early Showa era, with the construction window given as 1926 to 1934. The plan measures three bays along the ridge and two bays deep, under a gabled roof entered from the long eaves side, the arrangement Japanese carpenters call hirairi.
The doorway carries three layers: an outer single-sliding door surfaced in mortar, a board door behind it, and a sliding lattice door inside that. On the upper floor, a single window opens on the south wall, framed by two uprights and a horizontal lintel in the shape of a shrine gate. Carpenters name this a torii-waku window after that resemblance.
Overhead, the roof is carried on nobori-bari, beams pitched along the slope of the roof itself rather than laid flat and stacked with struts. It is a direct, economical way to span a small building, and it leaves the underside of the roof legible from within.
Why a Working Storehouse Entered the National Register
The building was entered on the national register on 27 October 2017, in the 88th round of registrations, under number 14-245. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (toroku yukei bunkazai), which is a different legal instrument from the National Treasure and Important Cultural Property designations that most visitors have heard of.
Japan created the registration system in 1996. Designation is a heavy tool: it locks a building down and demands ministerial permission for alterations. Registration is deliberately light. It applies to structures over fifty years old, asks owners only to notify the authorities before significant exterior changes, and offers tax relief and repair advice in return. The idea was to catch the enormous stock of modern buildings that would otherwise vanish while the designation machinery deliberated.
The criterion cited for this warehouse is the first of the three: contributing to the historical landscape of the country. That phrasing rewards a building for the company it keeps.
The company here is worth explaining. On 1 September 1923 the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed much of the commercial quarter around Hadano's Yotsukado crossing, largely by fire. Rebuilding came with road widening, and shopkeepers who had watched their kura and plaster-walled shops burn rebuilt with fire resistance in mind, reaching for mortar and for the vocabulary of Western classicism and Art Deco. The Igarashi shop building at the front of this plot, three timber storeys with fluted pilasters and carved capitals, is one of the district's better-known results. The No. 1 Warehouse applies the same logic at the back, in cheaper form: no columns, no capitals, just mortar incised to look like ashlar, out of sight of the customers.
What to Look For
Hadano sits at the foot of the Tanzawa mountains, and from the late Edo period into the early Showa era it prospered on tobacco leaf. That money built the Honcho district, and the district survived the postwar decades better than most Kanagawa town centres. Four more registered buildings stand within a short walk of Igarashi Shoten, following a further round of registrations that added shops and storehouses along the same streets.
The plot itself is private. The warehouses stand in the rear yard, and their interiors are not open.
What is open, at least at the time of writing, is the shop. The ground floor of the main building operates as a small cafe under the name Cafe Igarashi, and the shelves still carry baskets, brushes and packaged goods from the years when this was a working hardware store. Local reporting describes the upper floors being used as rented space and shown to visitors when circumstances allow. Hours and arrangements at a family-run cafe change without notice, so check before making a special trip.
From the shop, the reading that repays attention is the contrast. Front elevation: mortar washed to a fine finish, pilasters, a capital worth carving. Rear yard: the same material, the same fire-consciousness, but scored with a straightedge into imitation stone and left at that. One building was meant to be looked at. The other was meant to hold sacks of charcoal and keep them dry, and got its dignity on a budget.
Look at the scoring closely and the trick comes apart. The joints are too regular, the courses too even, the corners without the interlocking bond a mason would have had to cut. Which is rather the point. A carpenter in a provincial town, working with a barrel of mortar and a hand tool, produced a wall that reads as stone from ten metres away and as honest plaster from two.
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the No. 1 Warehouse?
- No. The property is privately owned and the warehouses in the rear yard are not open to the public. The ground floor of the main shop building at the front of the same plot has operated as a cafe, which is the practical way to experience the site.
- How does a Registered Tangible Cultural Property differ from an Important Cultural Property?
- Registration, introduced in 1996, is a lighter form of protection for buildings over fifty years old. Owners notify the authorities before major exterior alterations rather than seeking permission, and receive tax benefits and technical advice. Important Cultural Property designation imposes far stricter controls and is reserved for works of outstanding national value.
- Exactly when was it built?
- The national database gives the period as early Showa and brackets the construction between 1926 and 1934 without fixing a year. Hadano City likewise lists it as early Showa. The main shop building on the same plot is separately dated, and sources disagree on its year, so the warehouse dates should be read as a range rather than a precise figure.
- What is a torii-frame window?
- An opening framed by two uprights carrying a horizontal member across the top, resembling the gate that stands before a Shinto shrine. Here one appears on the south wall of the upper floor, the only substantial opening on that elevation.
- Are the other Igarashi warehouses registered too?
- Yes. The 2017 registration covered the shop and main house together with four warehouse entries: No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 and No. 5 registered as a single item. The last of these dates from 1937, later than the rest.
Basic Information
| Name | Igarashi Shoten Daiichigo Soko (Igarashi Shoten No. 1 Warehouse) |
|---|---|
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) |
| Registration date | 27 October 2017 (88th round), registration no. 14-245 |
| Registration criterion | Contributing to the historical landscape of the nation |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Structure | Timber frame, two storeys; building area 27 m²; three bays by two bays; gabled roof, eaves-side entry; mortar walls scored in imitation of stone; nobori-bari roof frame |
| Period | Early Showa (given as 1926 to 1934) |
| Type | Tertiary industry / building |
| Location | 2687 Honcho 2-chome, Hadano City, Kanagawa Prefecture |
| Owner | Private individual |
| Public access | Interior not open. Exterior stands in a private rear yard. The main shop building at the front of the plot has operated as a cafe; confirm hours in advance |
| Access | About a 5 minute walk northeast of Hadano Station on the Odakyu Odawara Line |
References
- National Database of Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Igarashi Shoten No. 1 Warehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00011906
- Cultural Heritage Online: Igarashi Shoten No. 1 Warehouse
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/247351
- Hadano City: Igarashi Shoten (registered cultural properties)
- https://www.city.hadano.kanagawa.jp/soshiki/4/1019/8/5/3/2/1891.html
- Cultural Heritage Online: Igarashi Shoten Shop and Main House
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/294810
Last verified: 2026.07.16