Toshiyuki Kumon Family Residence

A Storehouse Older Than the House It Serves

Kumon Toshiyuki-ke Jutaku Kura (公文利幸家住宅蔵, also written Kumon Toshiyuki-ke Jūtaku Kura), the storehouse of the Kumon Toshiyuki residence at 532 Tano, Tano Town, Aki District, Kochi Prefecture, dates from the closing decades of the Edo period (1830-1867) and was entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 1 December 2003. It stands west of the main house, its ridge running north to south, and it is said to have been moved here from Oka Goten, the mansion that served as the Tosa lord's official lodging in this town.

The chronology is worth setting out plainly. Everything else in this compound belongs to the Taisho era. The main house, the gate and privy, the connecting corridor and the barn all date from roughly 1912 to 1925. The storehouse predates them by half a century or more, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs records that it was relocated to its present position during the Showa era. A family building a new house around 1915 brought an older structure with them and set it down in the new garden.

The transmission is recorded as tradition rather than as documented fact. The Agency's entry uses the phrase "said to have been moved from the Oka Goten honjin", and no supporting document is cited. Oka Goten itself was rebuilt in Tenpo 15 (1844), which sits comfortably inside the storehouse's estimated date range, so the account is at least chronologically coherent. It has not been demonstrated.

Small in Plan, Tall in Section

The footprint is two ken by two ken, a square of roughly 3.6 metres a side, and the registered building area is 16 square metres. On that small base sits a two-storey timber structure with a gabled roof of sangawara pantiles. The Agency's description picks out the proportion directly: modest in scale, but built to a considerable height, and consequently the most conspicuous object on the plot.

That is the logic of a kura. Height buys storage volume without spending ground area, and lifting the contents above the floor keeps them clear of damp and flood water, which matters within sight of the Ikedani River. A household treasury built this way holds rice, documents, lacquerware and the possessions a family expects to outlive itself.

Two attachments modify the box. A geya, a lean-to roof, is set against the eastern face. On the southern gable end a barn is attached, and that attached section does double duty as the kuramae, the sheltered working space in front of a storehouse where goods are unpacked, sorted and loaded. Storehouses have thick walls and small, heavy doors; nobody wants to do the sorting inside one, and nobody wants to do it in the rain either.

Where It Sits, and What Sits Nearby

The registration criterion recorded for the storehouse is contribution to the historic landscape of the nation, the same criterion applied to the gate and privy, the corridor and the barn. Only the main house was registered as a model of design. The register entry number is 39-0084, in the thirty-ninth round, with public notice issued on 25 December 2003.

Look at the compound as a whole and a sequence appears. The gate and privy hold the southeastern corner. The corridor runs north from them to the main house. The main house occupies the centre with its east gable to the road. The storehouse stands to the west, and south of the storehouse the barn steps down to a lower ridge, with a three-jo detached room projecting from its eastern lean-to that served as a birthing room. Five buildings, one household, one continuous account of how a family in Taisho-era Kochi organised its ground.

This is a private residence and there is no interior access, no admission and no opening hours. What a visitor sees is the exterior, from the public road. Photographing the street elevation is ordinarily unproblematic; entering the plot or photographing into the garden is not.

Oka Goten, the source of the relocation tradition, can be visited. Built by the Oka family, timber merchants and the foremost of the town's five great merchant houses, it was rebuilt in 1844, was designated a Kochi prefectural cultural property in 1985, and is now owned by the town. It opens from 9:30 to 16:00 with general admission of 300 yen, closing on Tuesdays and on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. It stands about seven minutes on foot from Tano Station on the Tosa Kuroshio Railway's Gomen-Nahari Line, roughly 76 minutes from Kochi Station, and bicycles can be rented at the Tano Ekiya roadside station beside the platform.