Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Document Storehouse

What the Document Storehouse Is

Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Document Storehouse stands against the north-west corner of the main house at Imai in Okaya City, Nagano Prefecture, was built in 1861, and became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 14 October 1999.

It is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse of 33 square metres. A pair of thick Tsuchido doors opens on the east front, facing the main house. Rain boards protect the lower walls, and windows are set on both floors of the south gable end.

The roof is gabled and built as a separate cover raised over the plastered shell, laid with teppeiseki, a stone that splits into flat sheets. Raising the roof clear of the walls keeps rain off the earthen body of the building.

Why It Was Registered

Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Document Storehouse was listed under the criterion for works that cannot easily be recreated, a ground applied to only three of the eleven buildings on the estate: the main house, the rice storehouse and this one.

Part of the reason is the certainty of its date. A record of its construction survives, fixing the year at 1861. A storehouse whose date is documented becomes a measure against which undated buildings nearby can be judged.

What to Look For

Look first at the stone on the roof. Teppeiseki splits into flat plates and has long been used on buildings in this district. It behaves nothing like fired tile: dull blue-grey under cloud, and on a bright day each plate catches the light at its own angle.

The doors on the east front are earthen doors, built up in layers of plaster so that fire cannot pass. What Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Document Storehouse held was paper, and for a headman's household the deeds and tax records were property in the plainest sense. The thickness of those doors is a statement about their value.

Note also how few openings there are. The windows on the south gable end let air move so that damp does not settle, and their restraint shows that preservation mattered more here than daylight.

Visiting

Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Document Storehouse sits at the north-west corner of the main house, which places it behind the house as seen from the highway. Only a limited part of it, mostly the roof, can be made out from the road.

The estate is a private residence and neither the interiors nor the grounds are open. Stay on the road to look. The cultural properties staff of the Okaya City Board of Education can advise on access. (Checked in September 2026.)