Nabechaya Detached Storehouse

A Storehouse Facing the Main House Across a Courtyard

The Nabechaya Detached Storehouse (鍋茶屋離れ土蔵, Nabejaya hanare-dozo in the Agency for Cultural Affairs register) is an early-Showa earthen-walled storehouse at the Nabechaya restaurant in Higashibori-dori, Chuo Ward, Niigata City, placed on Japan's national register of tangible cultural properties on 28 April 2000. It rises two stories under a gabled pantile roof, covers 72 square meters, and stands at the northwest corner of the compound with a courtyard between it and the main house.

Seven Nabechaya structures were registered together that day: the main house, the reception block, the detached tatami wing, the front gate with its perimeter wall, a plaster storehouse, a brick storehouse, and this one. At 72 square meters it is the largest of the three storehouses. The brick storehouse covers 63 square meters and the plaster storehouse only 43.

Three storehouses on one property say something about the scale of the operation. Lacquerware, individual dining trays, folding screens, hanging scrolls, cushions, and the paraphernalia of formal banquets all rotate with the season and the occasion. The main house alone covers 1,251 square meters and carries a large banquet hall on its third floor. Running that many seats requires somewhere to put things away.

Namako Tiling Below, Plaster Above, Doors Aligned

The elevation is easy to read. Tiled namako work wraps the lower wall. Smooth white plaster covers everything above it. Heavy double doors sit at ground level and again directly above on the upper floor, matched in form and detailing.

Namako-kabe, literally sea-cucumber wall, is made by fixing flat square tiles to the wall surface and then piping the joints between them with plaster in raised half-round ridges. The swollen white lines cross into a grid or a diamond lattice, and the profile of each ridge gives the technique its name. The visual effect is strong enough that people take it for ornament, but the reasoning is practical. Tile keeps rain and snow off the earthen core, and the plaster ridges seal the gaps where water would otherwise work its way in. On the Japan Sea coast, with its damp air and its driving winter weather, armoring the lower wall is simple sense.

The kannon-biraki doors are the thick pair of leaves that close a storehouse opening. Doors of this kind are built to be shut tight when fire approaches, with stepped rebates cut into the meeting edges so no gap remains. What repays attention here is that the ground-floor pair and the upper-floor pair share the same form and the same design. Stacking them produces a vertical symmetry across the wall. The register entry credits the building with framing the corner of the Nabechaya frontage, which is another way of saying that functional hardware has been made to do compositional work.

A comparison on the same property makes the point sharper. The plaster storehouse near the eastern boundary dates from around 1910 and is timber-framed. Modern cladding now covers its east face, leaving traces of storehouse construction visible only at the gable and around the openings. This building, by contrast, was raised as true dozo work and still looks the part.

When a Storehouse Becomes a Dining Room

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the building is currently used as a dining room.

Japan's registration scheme was designed with exactly that kind of afterlife in mind. Introduced by a 1996 amendment to the cultural properties law, it sits apart in law from the designation that produces National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties. Alterations affecting a quarter or less of the ordinarily visible exterior need no filing at all, and larger changes require notification thirty days ahead rather than permission. Interior remodeling generally falls outside the rules. The scheme traded strict control for reach. Modern buildings begin to decay the moment they stop being used, so continued use is treated as a form of conservation.

All seven Nabechaya structures illustrate the idea. The main house, the reception block, and the detached tatami wing are all part of a working restaurant. Turning a storehouse into a place to eat belongs to the same logic, and the building was well suited to it before anyone converted anything. Thick earthen walls hold temperature steadily, staying cool in August and resisting the cold in February. Few windows means few distractions from the street outside.

The register says only "dining room" and does not specify guests or staff, so a visitor hoping to eat inside this particular building should ask when reserving.

Planning a Visit

Nabechaya trades as a restaurant and the buildings belong to the company that runs it. There is no visitor entrance and no fixed opening time for sightseers; seeing any interior means booking a meal on 025-222-6131. The restaurant's site lists Mondays and Sunday evenings as closures, with Sunday lunch service only, though published hours differ between sources. Confirm directly.

The outside asks nothing of anyone. This storehouse stands at the northwest corner, on the side where the front gate and perimeter wall meet the lane known locally as Nabechaya-dori, which puts it on the restaurant's public face. Follow the line of the wall away from the gate and its white bulk comes into view. Namako tiling reads best in direct light, when the raised joints throw their own shadows, so late morning through early afternoon suits it.

Buses on the Bandaibashi Line (route B1) leave the terminal at Niigata Station and reach Hommachi in around ten minutes, leaving a six-minute walk. A taxi covers the distance in eight to ten. Parking is not provided; paid lots operate nearby. Ask before photographing anything indoors, since other guests are eating. Nabechaya-dori also holds Hyotei, the former Hanaoka family house, likewise on the register, and the Furumachi quarter keeps a good number of buildings from the 1910s through the 1930s.