Iida Family Residence Rice Storehouse

What the Rice Storehouse Is

The Iida Family Residence Rice Storehouse (飯田家住宅米蔵, Iida-ke Jūtaku Komegura) is a single-storey earthen-walled storehouse built in 1859 in Toyoshina Takibe, Azumino City, Nagano Prefecture, extended in 1900 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2005. Among the estate's buildings with an exact construction year, it is the oldest.

It stands on the west edge of the lot, just south of the yeast starter storehouse, as a long north-south block 9 bays by 3 bays with a building area of 119 square meters. Its registration number is 20-0242.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs classes it as an industrial building rather than a domestic one, which fits a storehouse that held rice for the family's brewing.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency describes the Iida Family Residence Rice Storehouse as shaping the view of the estate from the west. With the yeast starter storehouse to the north and storage shed 1 to the south, its long white wall forms the western boundary of the property.

Built at the very end of the Edo period and extended in 1900, it now stands in line with a late Meiji shed and a 1914 brewery building. It is where the west side of the compound began to take shape, over half a century of additions.

What to Look For

The roof is an okiyane, a tiled Kirizuma-zukuri gable built as a separate frame and set on top of the clay-walled body. The arrangement shields the storehouse from fire while letting the roof be replaced on its own.

The detail worth pausing on is the pent roof on the east side. Its rafters are coated in clay and it too is built as an okiyane, the same treatment as the main roof. None of the other pent roofs on the estate is described as built this way.

Inside, a partition divides the building 4 bays from the north end, and the east wall has two doorways. Entrances and eaves are gathered on the east side, facing into the grounds, while the west face toward the outside is a closed wall.

Viewing the Rice Storehouse

The Iida Family Residence Rice Storehouse is inside a private residence and the interior is not open.

Look from the west side of the estate. Because the doors and pent roof face into the grounds, what the road shows you is the closed west wall and the roof above it. Limit photography to exteriors visible from public roads.

Directions and advice for viewing the estate from outside are on the Iida Family Residence page.