Okamoto Family Residence South Storehouse

The Rice Store on the Corner

The Okamoto Family Residence South Storehouse (岡本家住宅南の倉, Okamoto-ke Jūtaku Minami no Kura) is a two-storey earthen-walled timber storehouse at Mori in Ozu Town, Kikuchi District, Kumamoto Prefecture, built in the mid-Meiji period and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 23 August 1999. It occupies the southwest corner of the Okamoto compound, where the western and southern roads meet, and carries registration number 43-0029.

The building is gabled, Kirizuma-zukuri, and entered from the long side, Hirairi, under a tiled roof, with a building area of 55 square metres; an attached plank fence is included in the registration. Family tradition holds that it was used mainly to store rice, while furnishings and clothing went into the three-storey storehouse.

At 55 square metres it covers more ground than the three-storey storehouse, which stands on 41 square metres, but it rises only two floors and turns its long flank to the road. Where the other storehouse climbs, this one spreads.

Plainer by Design

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Okamoto Family Residence South Storehouse as simpler than the three-storey storehouse, noting for example that it has no hachimaki, the thick band of plaster that storehouse builders often ran beneath the eaves.

What it has instead is a skirt of horizontal weatherboarding, Shitami-itabari, around its lower walls, matching the fence along the property line and the stable. Along the southern road the storehouse holds the west end, the rear gate stands in the middle and the stable holds the east, with plank fencing between. The rear gate abuts the storehouse directly, and because the storehouse boarding, the fence and the stable boarding all top out at the same height, the three buildings read from the street as one continuous wall.

The storehouse was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. It was valued not for display but as the western anchor of that street frontage. The family put its showpiece storehouse at the back of the plot and dressed the roadside one to match the fence, and that distinction between where to impress and where to blend in runs through the whole compound.

What to Look For

Because the Okamoto Family Residence South Storehouse sits on the corner, the junction of the western and southern roads is the easiest place to understand its position. Then walk along the southern lane and follow the top edge of the boarding from the storehouse, past the fence beside the rear gate, to the stable. The line that ties three buildings into one begins here.

Seeing the South Storehouse

The storehouse stands inside a private residence and its interior is not open. Because it sits on the roadside at the southwest corner, its exterior can be seen from the public road on the south side.

The grounds cannot be entered, and the storehouse doors and windows are off limits. Photograph from the road only.