Okahashi Family Residence Inner Storehouse

About the Okahashi Family Residence Inner Storehouse

The Okahashi Family Residence Inner Storehouse (岡橋家住宅内蔵, Okahashi-ke Jūtaku Uchigura) is a storehouse of 1919 northwest of the main house on the Okahashi estate in Ozukucho, Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 17 August 2020 (No. 29-0307).

It is a 2-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse, walled in thick fireproof plaster, with a Hongawarabuki tiled roof and a building area of 62 square metres. It connects through an anteroom to the northwest end of the covered corridor that runs north from the main house.

Uchigura, "inner storehouse", is the name for a store kept at the back of a house on the family's side. Of the seven Okahashi storehouses, this is the only one linked to the main house by a corridor, so the family could reach it without going outdoors. It was built two years after the main house.

Why the inner storehouse was registered

The Okahashi Family Residence Inner Storehouse was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. What sets it apart is the combination of a thoroughly traditional exterior with a new way of building inside.

The roof is framed with a Truss. Storehouse roofs were normally built as a traditional Wagoya frame of posts and stacked beams, but here the load is carried by triangulated members. The truss came to Japan with Western-style buildings after the Meiji Restoration, and its use in a plastered storehouse of 1919 suggests the family employed carpenters familiar with up-to-date methods.

On the same estate the north rice storehouse, from the later Taisho years, also uses a truss, while the main storehouse, built in the same year as the main house, combines a wagoya frame with sloping beams (Nobori-bari). Storehouses built within a few years of each other took different routes, which offers a clue to how the rebuilding of the estate proceeded.

What to look for on the inner storehouse

The walls are plastered in Shikkui right up into the eaves, with a thickened band (Hachimaki) beneath them and a water-shedding ledge (Mizukiri) at mid-height. On the smooth white walls these make two clean horizontal lines.

The door opens on the east side, and the windows have small hoods carried on brackets (Mochiokuri), a detail shared by most of the Okahashi storehouses.

Inside, the floors are boarded and the walls lined with horizontal planks. In the middle of the upper floor is a hatch that can be opened for hauling goods between storeys, through which chests and boxes were presumably hoisted by rope.

Visiting the inner storehouse

The Okahashi Family Residence Inner Storehouse stands deep inside the estate, behind the main house and its corridor, and can barely be seen from the surrounding lanes. The interior, with its truss roof and hoisting hatch, is not open.

The estate is private and was not open to the public as of September 2026. Directions and a note on which buildings are visible from outside are on the Okahashi Family Residence page.