Kura no Kyodokan Sairi Yashiki

Kura no Kyodokan Sairi Yashiki: a merchant's compound opened as a museum

Kura no Kyōdokan Sairi Yashiki (蔵の郷土館齋理屋敷, "the Sairi House storehouse museum") is the former home of the Saito merchant family in Machinishi, Marumori Town, Miyagi Prefecture, where 12 structures, led by a shop storehouse of 1848, were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 26, 2011.

For seven generations, from the late Edo period into the early Showa era, the Saitos traded out of this lot. Every head of the house took the name Saito Risuke, so townspeople shortened it to Sairi, and the name stuck to the house. The family began in kimono silks and everyday cotton cloth, then moved into miso and soy sauce brewing and garment making. They also put money back into the town: a silk-reeling mill called Buyokan, an electric light company called Kiyotaki Dento, a company formed to bridge the Abukuma River, the rebuilding of Marumori Elementary School, and the relocation and merger of local shrines.

In 1986 the family gave the house, the storehouses and everything in them to Marumori Town. The town opened the compound as a museum in 1988 and finished a second phase of work in 1998. Town records put the site at about 6,872 square metres.

A street built to escape the river

Sairi Yashiki fronts a north-south street that exists because the whole town moved. After repeated floods in the 18th century, Marumori's merchant quarter was shifted to slightly higher ground; a presentation by Tohoku University's International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) dates the works from 1801 to their completion in 1804. The new street, now Prefectural Route 45, ran north to a new river landing, and as trade on the Abukuma grew, merchant houses such as Sairi rose along it.

The same IRIDeS material recalls Typhoon Hagibis in 2019, which flooded central Marumori. It quotes the local tourist office reporting that water stopped about 20 centimetres short of the Sairi gate, while mud washed into the back of the garden. The early 19th-century decision to move uphill arguably spared these buildings the worst.

The 12 registered structures and how to walk them

The registration covers six storehouses (kura), two gates, a stone bathhouse and three modern fixtures: an outdoor lamp, a stone utility pole and a steel lightning rod tower. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 04-0073 to 04-0084, and all were listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

• On the street: the Shop Storehouse (1848), the Front Gate and the Yomego no Kura (1904)
• In the garden: the Outdoor Lamp and the Stone Utility Pole (both early Showa), and the Stone Bathhouse (late Meiji) west of the Yomego no Kura
• At the back: the Sumai no Kura and Nariwai no Kura (both early Meiji), the Lightning Rod Tower to their east, and the Rear Gate and Wall (early Meiji) on the west side
• Across the lane: the Toki no Kura (mid-Meiji) and the Warabe no Kura (Taisho era)

The family's living quarters, called the kyotaku, are not part of the registration, and neither are the newer buildings the town added later. The natural route runs through the Front Gate, past each storehouse and its exhibition, then over the lane to finish at the Toki no Kura and Warabe no Kura. Taken in order, the buildings let you walk through roughly 80 years of one family building outward, from a late Edo shop storehouse to an early Showa steel tower.

Each structure has its own page with construction details and what to look for.

Visiting Sairi Yashiki: hours, admission and access

Sairi Yashiki is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with last entry at 4:30 p.m. It closes on Mondays, or on the following day when Monday is a national holiday, and hours can shift for special events. Admission is 620 yen for adults and 310 yen for children; groups of 20 or more pay 520 yen and 260 yen. A book of 11 tickets costs 6,200 yen, and an annual pass valid for one year from purchase costs 1,500 yen. Visitors with a disability certificate pay half price, and one companion enters free.

By train, take the Abukuma Express to Marumori Station, then a bus or taxi for about 5 minutes; walking takes about 30 minutes. Marumori Station is about 50 minutes from Fukushima Station and about 60 minutes from Sendai Station on the fastest connections. By car, allow about 20 minutes from Shinchi Interchange on the Joban Expressway, about 30 minutes from Shiroishi Interchange or about 40 minutes from Kunimi Interchange on the Tohoku Expressway. Besides the lot in front of the house, there is parking at the tourist information center about 80 metres away (buses welcome) and a second lot about 300 metres away.

Costume shoots and location filming must be arranged in advance through the museum's contact form and may carry a fee on top of admission. The phone number is 0224-72-6636.

In early August the house and surrounding streets are lit with handmade lanterns for Sairi Gen'ya, which reached its 36th edition in 2026. The kyotaku also hosts seasonal displays for the Doll Festival and Children's Day.