Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse

A Small Miso Store Beside the Storehouse

The Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse (利久堂酒井家住宅味噌蔵, Rikyūdō Sakai-ke Jūtaku Misogura) is a small earthen-walled storehouse in Kawai Shinden, Nagano City, built around 1887 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2001. On the homestead of the Kitamura family, a household of doctors, it stands northwest of the Main House, built right against the south side of the larger 2-storey Storehouse, and is used to store miso, the fermented soybean paste at the base of Japanese home cooking.

It is built in the Dozo-zukuri manner with 2 storeys and a tile roof, and covers just 14 square meters. On a footprint of 2 by 2.5 Ken it carries a north-south gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles, with its entrance on the long side in the Hirairi arrangement. It is the smallest of the five registered structures on the estate.

Small, but a Model of Its Type

The Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse holds registration number 20-0103 and, like the Main House, was registered as a model of its building type.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs acknowledges its modest size and then points to the careful framing of its openings, which gives the little building a solid, weighty character. That such care reached a 14-square-meter utility building is what makes it a fair measure of Meiji-era plastering standards.

What to Notice at the Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse

The Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse has 2 floors, but the ground floor was never boarded. It is left as a bare Doma earth floor. Storehouses for miso vats generally favor earth floors, because ground contact keeps temperature and humidity steady and heavy barrels sit securely on it. The design of the building follows from what it holds.

On the outside, look at the frames around the openings. In storehouse work, framing of this kind usually means building up the edges of doors and windows in stepped plaster layers to sharpen their outline, and on a wall this small those edges shape the whole appearance.

The pairing with the Storehouse to the north is worth a moment too. A large store for tools and a small one for food share a wall, a sign that this doctor's household kept its own provisions on site the way farming families did.

Seeing the Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse

The Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence Miso Storehouse stands northwest of the Main House, against the south side of the Storehouse, deep inside private grounds. No opening of the interior or visitor program has been announced (checked September 2026). Being small and screened by the house, it is unlikely to be visible from outside.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes it as in use for miso, so please stay off the property. Inquiries go to the Cultural Properties Division of Nagano City, and directions are on the Rikyudo Sakai Family Residence page.