Shoji Family Residence Rice Storehouse

The Rice Store Across the Moat

The Shoji Family Residence Rice Storehouse (荘司家住宅米蔵, Shōji-ke Jūtaku Komegura) is a storehouse for rice built around 1913 (Taisho 2) in Nishiando, Ando Town, Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2020.

It stands east of the Shoji family compound, on a separate plot across the line of the village's former moat. Set toward the north of that plot and facing south, it rises 2 storeys and covers 77 square metres. Even the address sets it apart: lot 810-1, while the other five registered buildings stand on lot 790.

No other Shoji storehouse comes close in size. It is well over twice the area of the Edo-period inner storehouse, and the scale given to a building for harvested rice says much about the standing of a family of village officials.

Why It Was Registered

The Shoji Family Residence Rice Storehouse received registration number 29-0300 in the 95th round of national registrations, dated 2020/4/3, for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs values it as evidence of how an old family's compound spread outward. Having added buildings inside the moat through the Edo and Meiji periods, the Shoji family put up a large store on land beyond the ditch early in the Taisho era. The Shoji Family Residence Rice Storehouse marks how far east that expansion reached.

What to Look For

A gabled tile roof and a south lean-to

The roof is a kirizuma-zukuri gable covered with sangawara-buki pan tiles, and a lean-to geya roof runs along the south face. The south is the front, with the space under the lean-to serving as the place for loading and unloading.

Plaster to the eaves

The walls are coated in shikkui lime plaster right out to the eave ends, with a hachimaki band of thickened plaster around the top. The west, north and east faces have tateita-bari vertical boarding along their bases to shield them from rain; the south front, already covered by the lean-to, does not.

Two rooms under a traditional frame

Inside, the store is divided into an east room and a west room, and the roof rests on a wagoya frame. Two rooms would have allowed rice to be kept apart by type or by harvest year, though no record of how it was used survives.

A link to the rice barn

On the compound side, a covered roof runs from the east face of the new reception room and rice barn toward this plot. One of the extensions to that building is also dated to around 1913, so the rice storehouse and the work on the barn side may belong to the same campaign. We found no source that states the connection outright.

Visiting

The Komegura is privately owned and is not open; as of October 2026 we found no announcement of open days. It stands on its own plot apart from the main compound, but we could not confirm how much of it can be seen from outside. Please stay off the property and respect the owners' privacy.

Photographs supplied by the Ando Town Board of Education in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database show the exterior.