Hatakoshi Family Residence Storehouse

What the Hatakoshi Family Residence Storehouse Is

The Hatakoshi Family Residence Storehouse (波多腰家住宅蔵, Hatakoshi-ke Jūtaku Kura) is an earthen-walled storehouse framed in 1933 in the Hata district of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 28 April 2000 under the number 20-0041.

It stands northeast of the main house, against the east end of the barn, and closes the eastern end of the storehouse row. Built in dozo-zukuri, it is 2 storeys high, with its ridge running east to west and its front facing south. The frontage is 3 and a half ken and the building area 23 square metres.

The roof is an okiyane gable of pantiles, set on the earthen body, with a lean-to canopy over the front. Of the 11 registered buildings whose year of construction is known, this is the latest.

Begun by the Father, Finished by the Son

The date of the Hatakoshi Family Residence Storehouse is written into the building. According to Matsumoto City, an ink inscription on the ridge-support timber gives August 1933 and records that the work was begun by the late Hatakoshi Shujiro and completed in the time of Yaroku.

The same two names appear in the inscription of the archive storehouse behind the main house. The two storehouses appear to have been one building programme carried across a change of generation. Some half a century after the rice storehouse, this building filled the row to its eastern end.

It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. What counts here is less any single detail than the place and scale that complete the line of storehouses.

What to Look For

On the south front, notice the canopy projecting over the door, a small roof that kept goods dry as they were carried in and out.

Walk your eye along the row from west to east: the two-storey rice storehouse, the long low barn, and then this storehouse rising to 2 storeys again. A tall building at the east end gives the row a clear finish.

Although it is a Showa building, it speaks the same language as the Meiji rice storehouse: a roof set on the earthen body and a canopy over the entrance.

Visiting the Hatakoshi Family Residence Storehouse

The storehouse is part of a private home and the interior is not open. It stands northeast of the main house at the end of the storehouse row. Stay off the property and look only from outside it.

Directions and viewing conditions for the whole compound are on the Hatakoshi Family Residence page.