Yoshimura Family Residence Tool Storehouse

The Oldest Building in the Compound

Yoshimura Family Residence Tool Storehouse (吉村家住宅道具蔵, Yoshimura-ke Jūtaku Dōgugura) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse built in 1869 at the Yoshimura Family Residence in Kawashiri 4-chome, Minami-ku, Kumamoto City, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on August 6, 2025. With a building area of 49 square meters, it is the oldest of the six listed structures.

The Yoshimura tool storehouse stands in the northeast of the lot. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as serving both as a tool store and as a store for household goods.

On its website, the Zuiyo brewery points to "the Yoshimura main house and tool storehouse" as the spot where its sake making began in 1867, using water from a neighboring well. The storehouse itself went up two years after that founding.

A Heavy Black-Plastered Exterior

The roof is gabled and laid with pantiles, and the entrance is on the long side parallel to the ridge, the arrangement called Hirairi. The walls are finished in black plaster, with a Hachimaki band beneath the eaves and a water-shedding course along the base.

Black plaster is made by working soot pigment into lime plaster; burnished, it takes on a low sheen. It demands more labor than white finishes and gives a wall a dense, sober look. The Agency, for its part, describes the Yoshimura tool storehouse as a weighty building that gives the compound its presence.

Two Posts Under the Ridge

Inside the Yoshimura Family Residence Tool Storehouse, each floor is a single room. The roof rests on Nobori-bari, sloping beams that carry the load of the rafters.

The feature the Agency singles out is a pair of posts standing on the line directly beneath the ridge. From each, tie beams reach out to either side, and together they hold up a jimune, a stout beam running lengthwise under the ridge that receives the upper ends of the sloping beams. Posts, ties and jimune work as one frame to span the open upper room.

The storehouse holds registration number 43-0210 and was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

Seeing the Yoshimura Tool Storehouse

The Yoshimura Family Residence Tool Storehouse stands within a private compound and is not open to the public. Photographs of its north face and interior appear on the Agency's database page.

Set at the back of the lot to the northeast, it is likely hidden from the street on the south by the main house and walls. Visitors should stay off the grounds and view the compound from the public road.