Nagano Meijo West Storehouse

A Household Storehouse on the Zenkoji Road

The Nagano Meijo West Storehouse (長野銘醸西土蔵, Nagano Meijō Nishi-dozō) is a late Edo-period storehouse on the grounds of the Nagano Meijo sake brewery in Yahata, Chikuma City, Nagano Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 19, 2014.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the closing decades of the Edo period, between 1830 and 1868, with alterations in 1926. It is a two-storey building in the fireproof Dozo-zukuri manner, thick clay walls under a tiled roof, and covers just 41 square metres. Its registration number is 20-0475.

It stands at the western end of the brewery's northern boundary, its long side to the road. That road is the Hokkoku Nishi Waki Okan, better known as the Zenkoji Road, a branch route that left the Nakasendo highway and ran north to the great temple of Zenkoji in Nagano.

Why It Was Registered

Twelve buildings at Nagano Meijo were registered on the same day in 2014, most of them working brewery sheds. The Nagano Meijo West Storehouse belongs to the other half of a sake-maker's compound: the family home.

According to the official description, it has held household goods since the days when the reception rooms of the old main house stood right beside it. Those rooms are gone. The storehouse outlived them and kept its role, and so its position now marks where part of the vanished house once was. That continuity, a small building recording how the estate has been rearranged over time, is what the registration recognises, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape.

What to Look For

Layers of Plaster

The walls are finished in white Shikkui lime plaster. Two details break up the surface. Partway up, a projecting ledge called a mizukiri throws rainwater clear of the clay wall below. Under the eaves, a stepped plaster cornice, the noki-jabara, builds out in successive ridges; each step is a separate coat laid on by the plasterer, and you can count them in the shadows.

A Timber Skirt for the Street Side

Only on the road side, the lower wall is clad in overlapping horizontal boards held by notched vertical battens, a technique known as sasarako Shitami-itabari. The boarding shields the most vulnerable part of the plaster from knocks and splashes, which made sense on a busy highway. Stand on the road and look up: dark boards, the line of the ledge, white wall, then the cornice. The Nagano Meijo West Storehouse presents its most finished face to passers-by.

The published record does not say what the 1926 alterations involved, so any patchwork you notice in the plaster is open to interpretation.

Visiting the Nagano Meijo West Storehouse

Because it faces the road, the Nagano Meijo West Storehouse is one building you can see without entering the property. It is a household storehouse and there is no notice of the interior being shown. Traffic uses the road, so choose where you stand with care.

Directions to the brewery and the arrangements for tours, open days and photography are covered on the Nagano Meijo page.