Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Storehouse

A Storehouse on the Southern Boundary

The Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Storehouse, in the Kawara district of Nishihara Village, Aso District, Kumamoto Prefecture, is an earthen-walled storehouse built in 1889 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 7 June 1999.

Known in Japanese as 矢野家住宅（本宅）倉 (kura), it stands south of the main house on the edge of the property. It is a fairly large storehouse, partly of 2 storeys, with a pantiled roof and its entrance on the gable end. The building area is 171 square metres, and the bamboo fence beside it is included in the listing. The miso storehouse and the barn were built in the same year, 1889, when part of the main house was also extended.

Walls That Would Be Hard to Make Again

The Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Storehouse is the only one of the eight Yano buildings listed as hard to reproduce. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes an elaborate finish: namako-kabe on the lower wall, lime plaster above, and small tiled drip ledges over the openings and across the middle of the side walls.

Namako-kabe is made by setting flat tiles into the wall and building up the joints between them in rounded ridges of plaster, so the joints draw a lattice across the surface. The drip ledges are short tiled projections set into the wall face to throw rainwater clear before it runs down the plaster. Both call for plasterers and roofers working together, and neither is quickly replicated.

The Agency also values the storehouse as evidence of the family's prosperity as landowners. A kura of this size with walls this carefully dressed says a good deal about the household's standing in the middle of the Meiji era.

Reading the Wall

Read the exterior from the ground up: the tile-and-plaster lattice of the namako-kabe at the base, the white plaster above, and the lines of drip tiles over the openings and across the flanks. Because the entrance is on the gable end, the triangle of the roof frames the working face of the building.

There is a discrepancy in the record. The register's structure field gives the storehouse as stone, single storey with a partial 2nd storey, while the description in the same database calls it an earthen-walled storehouse. Published sources do not settle which is accurate, and this article gives both.

Visiting the Storehouse

The Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Storehouse stands on the southern edge of the property, south of the main house, and does not face the front road. It is part of a private home and the interior is not open.

Visitors cannot enter the grounds, and a visit is limited to what can be seen from the public road. Keep photography to exterior shots from the road.