The Storehouse That Faces the Street
The Northwest Storehouse of the Hori Family Residence (堀家住宅乾蔵, Horike Jūtaku Inui-gura) is a late Edo-period dozō storehouse in the Terada district of Jōyō City, Kyoto Prefecture, entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011. It stands at the northwest corner of the compound, directly along the road, and it is the first thing anyone walking east from Terada Station notices.
The name repays a moment. Inui means northwest in the old system of directions borrowed from the divination compass, where each quarter took the name of an animal or trigram rather than a bearing. Buildings in a farm compound were routinely named this way, by where they sat relative to the main house, and the practice survives in the registered names of Japanese cultural properties long after ordinary speech abandoned it.
It is a large storehouse. The plan runs 9.9 metres along the ridge by 4.9 metres in depth, 48 square metres of floor area, a single storey under a gabled roof of sangawara pantiles. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record calls it an example of a storehouse built on a large scale, which in the vocabulary of these entries is a substantive remark rather than a courtesy.
Look at how it meets the ground. The base is kiriishi-zumi, dressed stone laid in courses, lifting the earthen walls clear of the damp. Above that the walls are finished in white plaster, and the lower portion is faced with vertical boarding. That boarding is not ornament: rain thrown up off the road eats plaster, and replacing a few boards costs a fraction of replastering a wall. Nearly every storehouse in Japan carries the same detail, and it is one of the quickest ways to tell a working building from a reconstructed one.
The entrance is on the north face, toward the road, sheltered by a pantiled eave and closed with a sliding door that runs into a pocket rather than swinging. Windows pierce the north and south walls, each with its own small eave above. On a wet afternoon the reason for all those little roofs becomes obvious: every opening in a plastered wall is a place where water can find its way in.
Registered for the Landscape It Makes
Seven buildings at the Hori compound were registered together on 25 July 2011, numbered 26-0373 through 26-0379: the main house, the detached guest rooms, this northwest storehouse, the old storehouse, the east storehouse, the south storehouse with its adjoining room, and the long gatehouse. The northwest storehouse carries number 26-0375.
Its registration criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of the nation. That wording is worth taking literally here. The building's value in the eyes of the Agency lies partly in the room it occupies on the street, in what it does to the view along the road, in the fact that a passerby in 2026 encounters a plastered Edo-period wall where they would otherwise encounter a carport. The main house was registered under a different heading, as a model of design; the storehouses and the gate were registered for the townscape they hold together.
Registration is not designation. The register of Tangible Cultural Properties, created in 1996, sits below the older system of Important Cultural Properties and National Treasures and works on notification rather than permission. Owners retain wide latitude to repair, adapt and continue using their buildings. For a compound that is still somebody's house, and where a storehouse may still hold somebody's belongings, the arrangement is the one that makes preservation possible at all.
The east face of this storehouse touches the long gatehouse. The two of them, plaster wall meeting tiled gate roof, form the entire public face of the Hori establishment. Agency commentary on the gatehouse describes the pair as presenting a weighty frontage befitting a village headman, and the observation applies to the storehouse just as much as to the gate.
Standing on the Road
Of the seven registered buildings here, the northwest storehouse is the one you can actually see. The Hori Family Residence is a private home with no admission, no opening hours and no interior access, but this storehouse sits on the road boundary, and its north face is fully in public view.
Give it a few minutes. The plaster wall reads as a single pale plane at first, then resolves into parts: the stone base with its horizontal joint, the vertical boards along the bottom, the window openings with their small tiled eaves, the recessed entrance under the larger eave. The gabled roof runs the full 9.9 metres, and the length of that unbroken ridge is what conveys the scale of the household that built it.
Photography from the road is acceptable. Keep it to the building. Do not photograph residents, do not shoot through the gate into the compound, and do not linger in the middle of a lane that neighbours use daily.
Morning light falls on the north face indirectly and evenly, which suits a white plaster wall better than direct afternoon sun. If you have a choice, come before noon.
Terada Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line is roughly 300 metres west, about four or five minutes on foot and around 35 minutes from Kyoto Station by local or semi-express. JR Jōyō Station on the Nara Line is some 15 minutes east on foot.
The Jōyō City Museum of History and Folklore, five minutes south of Terada Station on the fourth floor of Bunka Parc Jōyō, displays the farming implements and household goods that storehouses like this one were built to hold. It opens 10:00 to 17:00, last entry 16:30, closed Mondays, 200 yen for adults. Further east, 1.3 kilometres away at the foot of Mount Kōnosu, the main hall of Mito Shrine is an Important Cultural Property built in Bunan 5 (1448), the oldest standing building in the city, and its grounds are open without charge.
Do not confuse this compound with the Hori Family Residence in Tatsuno City, Hyōgo Prefecture, an Important Cultural Property of 23 buildings that belonged to a headman under the Hitotsubashi Tokugawa house. The two share a surname and nothing else.
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Q&A
- Can the Northwest Storehouse of the Hori Family Residence be seen from outside?
- Yes. It stands directly on the road at the northwest corner of the compound and its north face is fully visible from the public street, though the interior is closed and the residence is a private home.
- What does the name of the Hori Family Residence Northwest Storehouse mean?
- Inui-gura means the storehouse in the inui quarter, an old directional term for northwest. Buildings in farm compounds were commonly named by their position relative to the main house.
- How old is the Northwest Storehouse of the Hori Family Residence?
- Agency for Cultural Affairs records date it to the late Edo period, without a precise year. It was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 25 July 2011, registration number 26-0375.
- Why is the lower wall of the Hori Family Residence Northwest Storehouse boarded?
- Vertical boards protect the plaster from rain splashed up off the ground. Boards are far cheaper to replace than a replastered wall, which is why the detail appears on storehouses throughout Japan.
- How do I get to the Hori Family Residence in Jōyō City?
- Terada Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line is about 300 metres west, four to five minutes on foot, and roughly 35 minutes from Kyoto Station. JR Jōyō Station is around 15 minutes away on foot.
Basic Information
| Name | Northwest Storehouse of the Hori Family Residence (堀家住宅乾蔵, Horike Jūtaku Inui-gura) |
|---|---|
| Location | 67-1 Terada Chūdaishō, Jōyō City, Kyoto Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 26-0375 |
| Year Designated | Registered 25 July 2011 (70th registration round) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 9.9 m along the ridge, 4.9 m in depth; floor area 48 m²; timber, single storey, tiled gabled roof |
| Owner | Private (owner name not published in the national database) |
| Public Access | Interior not open. Exterior visible from the public road |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs): Horike Jūtaku Inui-gura
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00008726
- Cultural Heritage Online: Horike Jūtaku Inui-gura
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/161537
- Jōyō City Board of Education: Cultural Properties
- https://www.kyoto-be.ne.jp/joyou-be/cms/?cat=76
- Jōyō City: History and Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.joyo.kyoto.jp/category/8-3-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html
Last verified: 2026.07.29