Mizote Family Residence Folding Screen Storehouse

The Largest Storehouse, Gable to the Street

Mizote Family Residence Folding Screen Storehouse (溝手家住宅屏風蔵, Mizote-ke Jūtaku Byōbu-gura) is an earthen-walled storehouse built in 1866 on a wealthy farming family's estate in Hayashima, Okayama Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2021.

It stands on the east side of the site, ridge running east to west, a two-storey dozo-zukuri building with a tiled roof and a footprint of 111 square metres, the largest of the Mizote storehouses. Its east gable faces the road. Today it serves as a barn. The name means a storehouse for byōbu folding screens, but no source consulted for this page records what it originally held.

Why It Was Registered

The storehouse was registered under number 33-0343 for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs counts it among the main elements of the estate's street frontage.

Together with the nagayamon gate, the Mizote Family Residence Folding Screen Storehouse shapes what anyone walking along the east road sees of the compound. A large storehouse of the last years of the shogunate and a mid-Edo gate have shared that role ever since.

What to Look For

The walls are white plaster. The south front has namako-kabe along its lower band, and both of its doorways carry small canopies roofed in hongawara tiles.

The east gable, the one facing the street, is the part to study. Its lower wall is clad in vertical boards, and above that the plaster field is outlined in namako-kabe, used here as a frame around the gable rather than as a protective band at the base. It is the most distinctive detail on the Mizote Family Residence Folding Screen Storehouse.

Inside are two rooms, east and west. The west room has no upper floor and is open to the roof.

Visiting

The Mizote Family Residence Folding Screen Storehouse belongs to a private home and its interior is closed. Its east gable faces the road, though, so the board-clad base and the namako-kabe frame can be seen from the street.

Take it in together with the nagayamon gate from the road on the east side. Do not enter the grounds, and keep photography to what is visible from the road.