Oga Family Residence Inner Storehouse

The storehouse at the back of the compound

The Oga Family Residence Inner Storehouse (大賀家住宅内蔵, Ōga-ke Jūtaku Uchigura) is a mid-Meiji period plastered storehouse at Imabō in Kita-ku, Okayama City, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 25, 2002. It is built in Dozo-zukuri, the thick-walled storehouse construction, covers 55 square metres and carries a tiled roof. It stands at the deepest point of the compound, north of the detached reception room and west of the second-floor tatami room.

The Oga family shipped tatami facing mats straight to Edo, and 9 buildings on their property are now on the national register. The main house and front gate face the street; the barns that handled freight line the canal to the north; and between them, tucked away, sits the Oga Family Residence Inner Storehouse. It was fitted out along with the second-floor tatami room as the storage wing at the rear of the estate.

Its Japanese name, uchigura, marks it as the storehouse kept inside the compound. A second storehouse from the late Edo period stands shoulder to shoulder with it on the north side.

What the walls are doing

The outer walls are coated in Shikkui, the lime plaster used across Japanese storehouse building. They are not white all the way down. Below a horizontal band called the hachimaki, vertical boards sheathe the wall.

The reasoning is practical. Lime plaster suffers where rain splashes back off the ground, and the lower third of any storehouse wall takes the worst of it. Boards absorb that damage instead, and boards can be replaced. Plaster cannot, not without a plasterer and a season of drying.

Above, the roof is Kirizuma-zukuri, a plain gable, laid in Hongawarabuki tiling of alternating round and flat tiles. It is heavy roofing, matched to walls that are heavy themselves.

The Oga Family Residence Inner Storehouse was listed under the criterion for buildings that serve as a model of design. The main house and the barns nearby were listed under a different criterion, the one covering contribution to the historic landscape. Only 3 of the 9 buildings here carry the design criterion.

Look at the small windows

The detail worth walking around for sits on the south and west walls: small windows fitted with iron grilles and thick single-leaf plaster doors. Each door is a timber core built up with layer after layer of lime plaster until, closed, it matches the thickness of the wall around it. A fire in the yard could burn itself out while the contents stayed dry and cool.

The windows are small because a storehouse does not want light. Damp and sunlight are both enemies of stored goods, and tatami facing mats are woven from dried rush stems that mildew when wet and fade when lit. The size of the opening and the depth of the door are a direct reading of what the family had to protect.

The date matters too. Most of the estate went up in the late Edo period, and the Oga Family Residence Inner Storehouse came later, in the middle Meiji years. A merchant house does not build extra storage unless the trade is still growing.

Visiting the Oga Family Residence Inner Storehouse

This building is not open. The Okayama Prefectural Board of Education lists the property's public access as closed, there is no route to the interior, and no dated opening has been announced.

Sitting as deep in the compound as it does, it resists being seen whole. From the road on the north side the storehouse gable shows above the roofs of the barns, and that is roughly the limit of what public ground offers.

Keep your feet on the lane if you photograph it. Everything past the wall is somebody's private life.

By bus, services from the east exit of JR Okayama Station reach Polytech Center Okayama-mae in roughly 23 minutes, and the compound is 8 minutes on foot from that stop. From Niwase Station on the JR Sanyo Line the distance is 2.6 kilometres, about 35 minutes walking or 7 by taxi. Nowhere to park.