Shimadai Liquor Store

Eighty Square Metres, Registered in 2004

Shimadai Liquor Store (嶋臺酒店, Shimadai Sakaten) stands at 191 Nakahori-cho, Oike-dori Karasuma Higashi-iru, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture, entered on the national register of tangible cultural properties on 9 June 2004. The quantity is one building: timber, two storeys, tiled roof, with a footprint of 80 square metres.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the date as Meiji, 1883, a single year rather than a range. Most registered properties covered here carry a span of years; this record fixes one.

The building stands at the southeast corner of the plot and takes the street on the east as its front. The owner field is blank.

An L-Shape Wrapped Around Another Registered Building

What catches the eye in the record is the shape of the plan.

The plan is an L wrapped around the southeast storehouse, laid throughout as earth floor.

That storehouse is a registered property in its own right, entered separately from this shop. This building wraps around it.

Buildings on one plot have been registered separately before among the properties covered here, but one wrapping around another is new.

Laid throughout as earth floor means no boarding or matting anywhere: the whole interior is beaten earth. The character of a place of trade shows in the treatment of the floor.

Matched in Appearance as Well

The plan is not the only place the neighbour appears. The exterior is described in the same terms.

The gable end facing Oike-dori is finished in white plaster above, forming a continuous scene with the southeast storehouse.

Wrapped around it, and matched to it. Plastering the upper gable white makes the two read as one along the street.

Two separately registered buildings are treated as one in plan and in elevation alike. Registration proceeds building by building, but the buildings themselves cannot be pulled apart.

The Daisen-in garden takes in the ground on four sides of the study garden, and at Amanohashidate shrine and temple grounds are held inseparable from the scene. Relations between a centre and its surroundings, or between neighbours, are written into these records.

Three Elements on the Front

The front, facing the street to the east, carries three recorded features.

The ground floor front has a slatted lattice, with the entrance opened towards the south. Above the eaves the wall is of earth, pierced by a barred window.

A slatted lattice sets thin members at even intervals, covering the ground-floor front. The entrance is not at the centre but towards the south.

The barred window is a small opening with vertical bars, set in the wall above the eaves. Cut into an earth wall, part of the plastered surface becomes a window.

Lattice below, earth wall with a barred window above. The Yoshida Family Residence plasters its upper wall to the eaves while showing head rails and brackets; there too, upper and lower are handled differently.

Two further Shimadai buildings, the thread shop and the study, are registered separately again. Four entries in all.

Visiting

The Agency records nothing about public access and leaves the owner field blank. Registered properties are often buildings their owners go on using, and opening the interior is not assumed.

Check with Kyoto City or a similar source about whether it is open before planning a visit.

The exterior can be seen from the street: the slatted lattice and barred window on the east front, and the white-plastered gable on the Oike-dori side.

The continuous scene formed with the southeast storehouse reads from Oike-dori. How the two buildings run together is the feature this record sets down. The address is 191 Nakahori-cho, Oike-dori Karasuma Higashi-iru, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto City.