Okamoto Family Residence Three-Storey Storehouse

A Meiji Landowner's Tower of a Storehouse

The Okamoto Family Residence Three-Storey Storehouse (岡本家住宅三階の倉, Okamoto-ke Jūtaku Sangai no Kura) is a three-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 stands in the northeast of the Okamoto compound, directly north of the main house, under registration number 43-0028.

It is a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled building entered from the gable end, Tsumairi, with a tiled roof and a building area of just 41 square metres. An attached plank fence is part of the registration. The family used it for household furnishings and clothing, while the south storehouse was kept for rice.

Forty-one square metres on the ground and three floors up gives the Okamoto Family Residence Three-Storey Storehouse the proportions of a small tower. Simply building a storehouse this tall in a rural compound took money and skilled labour, and the family meant it to be noticed.

A Storehouse Dressed to Impress

The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls this an elaborately designed storehouse and gives two examples. The base of the walls is finished in Namako-kabe, and a band of drip tiles runs around the building at second-floor level.

Namako-kabe sets flat tiles against the plaster and seals the joints with raised ridges of white lime, protecting the lower wall from splashback and fire. The drip tiles project like a narrow eave from the face of the wall and throw rainwater clear before it can run down and soak the earth beneath. Both are practical measures for keeping an earthen storehouse sound. Both also read from a distance as bold graphic lines, black and white.

The contrast with the south storehouse on the same property is instructive. The Agency notes that the south storehouse is simpler, lacking the thickened plaster band, the hachimaki, beneath the eaves. The three-storey storehouse had the hachimaki, the namako-kabe and the drip tiles: it was where the family spent the most.

It was registered as difficult to reproduce, and the Agency treats it as evidence that the Okamoto household went on prospering as landowners after the Meiji Restoration. Samurai status disappeared; the family's resources evidently did not, and some of them went into the height and finish of this building.

What to Look For

If you ever get a clear view of the Okamoto Family Residence Three-Storey Storehouse, read the wall from the ground up. The namako-kabe at the base, the drip tiles at the second level and the hachimaki under the eaves each mark a change of finish. Because the building faces gable-end on, the tall triangular gable wall stretches the three storeys even further upward.

Seeing the Storehouse

The storehouse stands inside a private residence and is not open, inside or out. Positioned in the northeast of the plot behind the main house, it is largely screened from the public roads on the west and south by the house and fences.

The grounds cannot be entered, so any view is from the road only. Photograph from the road and keep the camera off the living quarters.