Hara Family Residence Miso Storehouse

A Storehouse for the Household's Miso

Hara Family Residence Miso Storehouse (原家住宅味噌蔵, Hara-ke Jūtaku Miso-gura) is a single-storey timber storehouse built in 1902 in Nihongi, Konan Ward, Niigata City, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 1 August 2016. It has a tiled gabled roof and a building area of 63 square metres.

It stands east of the main house and faces west. The tool storehouse stands beside it, also facing west, with a single-storey shed between them, and the tool storehouse's lean-to roof is aligned with the front of the Hara Family Residence Miso Storehouse.

As the name suggests, it was presumably where the household made and aged its miso. It is nearly twice the size of the tool storehouse next door.

Built Like Its Neighbour, Framed Differently

Outside, it follows the same recipe as the tool storehouse. The lower walls are clad in Shitami-itabari boarding, the upper walls are Shinkabe with the posts exposed, a hachimaki plaster band runs around the top, and the roof is an oki-yane set on as a separate structure. Storehouse techniques, again, applied to a timber building.

The difference is inside. The interior is also finished in exposed-post shinkabe, and the roof is carried on a long jimune, a heavy timber running beneath the ridge, from which nobori-bari rafter beams descend along the slope.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs credits the Hara Family Residence Miso Storehouse with setting off the old family's compound, and with the tool storehouse it forms a row of storage buildings on the east side of the main house.

What to Look For

The prize is the ridge timber. A single heavy piece running the length of a 63-square-metre storehouse is the kind of thing a timber merchant's family could afford to use.

From outside, the wall reads in bands, board cladding below, exposed posts above, the plaster band on top, and because the tool storehouse next door is built the same way, viewing the two as one frontage makes the difference in their size obvious.

Viewing the Miso Storehouse

The miso storehouse is closed to the public, and its interior, including the roof framing, cannot be visited.

It stands east of the main house, facing into the compound. We have not been able to confirm how much of it can be seen from the public road, and the grounds cannot be entered.