Fujimura Seishi Co., Ltd. Nishikura

A Meiji Storehouse at the Mouth of the Nahari River

The Nishikura (西蔵, also written Nishi-gura, meaning West Storehouse) of Fujimura Seishi Co., Ltd. stands at Otsu 2630 in Nahari Town, Aki District, Kochi Prefecture, a two-storey plaster-walled storehouse built in 1899 (Meiji 32) and entered on Japan's national Register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 October 2000. It runs about 16 metres along the ridge and about 10 metres across, with a building area of 190 square metres.

The form is plain and regional at the same time. The ridge lies east to west under a simple gable roof, kirizuma-zukuri, covered with sangawara pantiles. The door is set in the long side rather than under the gable, an arrangement Japanese carpenters call hirairi. The walls are dozo construction, a timber frame packed with earth and finished in thick lime plaster. That mass of earth is not decoration. It slows the swing of temperature and humidity inside, which is why merchants used the type for anything that spoiled, and why a silk company found it useful.

Stand at either gable end and the local accent appears. Five narrow courses of tile project from the white wall at intervals, stepping down the height of the building like shallow shelves. These are mizukiri-gawara, water-cutting tiles, a device found across the Tosa region of Kochi and rarely elsewhere in Japan. Rain driven sideways by a typhoon hits the wall, runs down, meets a tile course, and is thrown clear of the plaster below.

The site sits on the left bank of the Nahari River, close to where it meets the Pacific. Fujimura Yonetaro, born in Nahari in 1852, built his fortune in camphor, sawmilling and shipping before taking up Norwegian-style whaling in 1908. He split the whaling business off as Fujimura Hogei in 1916 and founded Fujimura Seishi the following year, bringing three experienced instructors from Gunma Prefecture and starting with a workforce of around eighty. The storehouse is older than the company by nearly two decades. According to the museum now run on the site, it served as a sake storehouse before the filature was established.

Registered, Not Designated

Japan keeps two separate systems for protecting historic buildings, and the difference matters here. National Treasures (kokuho) and Important Cultural Properties (juyo bunkazai) are designated: the state selects them, tightly controls alteration, and pays a large share of repair costs. Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (toroku yukei bunkazai) are registered, under a system created in 1996 for the far larger body of modern buildings still in daily use. Owners keep a free hand for most work and give notice before major changes. The Nishikura belongs to the second group.

Its registration number is 39-0008, issued in the twenty-sixth round of registrations. The Agency for Cultural Affairs recorded the registration on 18 October 2000 and published notice of it on 6 November of the same year. The criterion cited is the one covering buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country, which is a fair reading of what this white wall does at the edge of a town where similar walls line the old road.

Four items from the Fujimura Seishi compound went onto the register together on that date: the Nishikura, the Higashikura (East Storehouse), a warehouse, and the stone wall along the western boundary. The Agency's database now carries detail pages for only two of them, the Nishikura and the stone wall. Local accounts describe the factory buildings being taken down after the company stopped spinning in Japan, with solar generation now occupying much of the ground. The company's own corporate profile lists solar power as a current line of business.

The national register categorises the building under secondary industry, and the Agency's description calls it the cocoon storehouse of the filature. The museum on the site describes the same building as holding finished raw silk under steady temperature and humidity. Both uses fit a dozo, and it is likely the building did different work in different decades.

Seeing It, and What Else Is Close By

The building is open to visitors, which is unusual for a registered property in private ownership. The site operates as the Fujimura Seishi Memorial Museum, and the company publishes its hours as 8:30 to 16:30 on weekdays, with last admission at 16:00 and closure on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. The telephone number is 0887-38-4711. Hours at small private museums change, so a call before travelling is sensible.

Inside are reeling machines, samples of raw silk, photographs of the factory floor going back decades, trademarks used by Japanese filatures, and material on the founder and his family. Kochi Prefecture recognised the works as a prefectural modern industrial heritage site in 2007. The company's own record notes that it installed the first automated equipment in the prefecture in 1957 and that its silk was rated the finest in the country in 1983.

For photography inside, ask at the desk. The exterior is a different matter: the gable wall with its five tile courses faces the approach, and the stone wall running along the western edge of the property is visible from the public road at any hour.

Getting there is easy without a car. Nahari Station is the terminus of the Tosa Kuroshio Railway Gomen-Nahari Line, roughly ninety minutes from Kochi, and the walk from the station takes about twelve to fifteen minutes. Free parking for around twenty cars is available on site. By road it is about forty minutes from the Geisei-nishi interchange.

Nahari rewards an unhurried afternoon. More than a dozen buildings in the town carry the same registered status, each with an explanatory board outside, and the old road is lined with white plaster, water-cutting tiles, cobble walls, and the occasional red brick storehouse. Nahari Ura no Kai, a local group active since 1999, guides walking tours that take about two hours on foot.