Saito Family Residence Storehouse

Saito Family Residence Storehouse: An Edo Kura That Travelled to Sekiya

At the far end of the Saito grounds in Sekiya-Honmuracho, north-west of the main house, stands a storehouse that began its life somewhere else. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record puts the matter carefully: the building is said to have been moved here around Koka 2, the year 1845, from the Hori family of Kameda. Nobody claims certainty on that point, and the national database does not pretend otherwise.

Kameda lies east of the Shinano River, a good distance from Sekiya even now. Moving a two-storey plastered kura across that ground in the 1840s meant dismantling it timber by timber, carting the pieces, and reassembling them on new foundations. Japanese carpentry made this possible in a way that masonry never could: joints were cut to be taken apart, and a well-built storehouse was an asset worth the labour of relocation.

The fabric itself is older than the move. The Agency assigns the structure to the late Edo period, with a range of 1751 to 1829, and records the 1845 relocation as a separate event. So the building has stood on the Saito property for close to two centuries while carrying a body that was already old when it arrived.

It is a modest thing beside the main house: 59 square metres of building area, two timber-framed storeys under tile, against the 395 square metres of the residence. Storehouses were not built to impress. They were built to keep things dry, cool, and safe from fire.

The Okiyane Roof and Why the Registration Says What It Says

The detail that repays attention here is the roof. This kura uses okiyane construction, literally a placed roof, in which the tiled sankawara roof sits as a separate assembly over the thick plastered box beneath rather than bearing directly on it. The reason is fire. A storehouse earns its keep by surviving the conflagrations that periodically swept Japanese towns, and the earthen shell does that work. The timber roof above is, in effect, sacrificial: if it burns, the contents below stay sealed inside their plaster armour. It also lets the shell breathe and lets the roof be repaired without touching the walls.

The exterior is finished in shikkui, lime plaster, laid over the earthen core. Windows are set on both side elevations at each floor, an arrangement that gives cross ventilation without opening the gable ends where weather hits hardest. The roof is kirizuma, gabled.

The storehouse was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 28 April 2000, notified on 17 May, under registry number 15-0047 and in the 23rd registration round. It shares its date with the main house next door, but not its criterion. Where the residence was cited as a model of design, this building was registered under the second criterion: that it would not be easy to recreate.

That phrasing is worth unpacking for anyone new to the system. It is not a claim about beauty. It points at technique and material that the present cannot readily supply: earthen walls of that thickness, plastered by hand in successive coats over months, framed by carpenters working to conventions that no longer form part of ordinary practice. The Agency notes the building is in good condition and transmits the Edo storehouse form clearly. A well-kept example of a vanished craft, in other words, is worth protecting whether or not it is handsome.

Registration under the 1996 amendment to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties was designed for exactly this class of building. It is a light-touch instrument, requiring notification rather than permission for changes, aimed at keeping working buildings in use rather than freezing them.

Access and Alternatives

The storehouse belongs to Saito Real Estate Co., Ltd. and is not open to visitors. It stands at the rear of the property, screened by the main house, so even the exterior is difficult to see from the road. Do not attempt to enter the grounds.

Anyone who wants to understand what a kura is should go where the doors open. Niigata has plenty. The Northern Culture Museum in Konan Ward, the Ito family compound registered on the same April day in 2000, preserves storehouses within a twenty-six-building estate that visitors walk through freely. Nakahara-tei in Nishi Ward, registered in 2018, includes storehouses among its five structures and runs guided access. Takashimaya in Iwamuro Onsen keeps a storehouse and an old rice granary alongside its main house.

For the wider story of Sekiya, the neighbourhood itself is the exhibit. Kanabachiyama Park marks the imperial army's 1868 encampment, and the Sekiya Bunsui diversion channel, cut to protect the city from the Shinano River, runs a short walk away. The Saito storehouse survived the fire that took the original main house in that war. Standing on the same ground and knowing that is most of what a visit here can offer.