Oga Family Residence Pickle Barn and Cargo Barn

Where cargo came ashore and pickles were packed

The Oga Family Residence Pickle Barn and Cargo Barn (大賀家住宅漬物納屋及び荷揚納屋, Ōga-ke Jūtaku Tsukemono-naya oyobi Niage-naya) is a late Edo period outbuilding at Imabō in Kita-ku, Okayama City, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 25, 2002. It is timber-framed, single-storey, tiled, and covers 48 square metres. It stands along the north edge of the compound, continuing the line of the barn beside it.

The Oga family traded tatami facing mats directly with Edo. The north boundary of their property met the old harbour of Imabō, and boats worked in from the sea to unload at the back door. This building is that arrangement turned into architecture.

The long name records two jobs under one roof. One end held pickling stores for the household; the other took freight off the boats.

One roof, two kinds of wall

The plan is a long, narrow dogleg, running straight and then turning at a right angle to follow the north boundary and the canal.

What repays attention is how the walling changes along its length. The pickle store is a single room built in Shinkabe, the construction that leaves the posts exposed and sets the wall panels between them. It is a closed room, because pickling wants shelter from light and swings of temperature.

The cargo end works the other way round. A gate and a wall face the canal, while the side towards the courtyard is left completely open. Nobody carrying a bale wants to negotiate a doorway, so the wall was simply left out. Goods came off a boat, through the gate, and straight into the yard without a turn.

Overhead, Hongawarabuki tiling of alternating round and flat units covers the whole length. Two very different spaces, gathered under one heavy roof.

The working side of a merchant house

Tatami facing mats are bulky. A household sending them to Edo needed somewhere to receive, bundle and transfer them, and the Oga Family Residence Pickle Barn and Cargo Barn was built for that sequence. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as the kind of facility a merchant handling goods in quantity could not do without.

The street front of the estate carries the main house and the front gate, with formal rooms behind them. All of that rested on what happened here, at the water's edge. A merchant compound sets its ceremony and its labour side by side on the same plot, and this is the labour.

The listing criterion is the one covering contribution to the historic landscape of the country, the criterion applied to most of the 9 registered buildings here. At 48 square metres, the Oga Family Residence Pickle Barn and Cargo Barn is the fourth largest of them, after the main house, the detached reception room and the inner storehouse.

Visiting the Oga Family Residence Pickle Barn and Cargo Barn

The plot is a private home and this building is not open. Public access is listed as closed by the Okayama Prefectural Board of Education, there is no route to the interior, and no dated opening has been announced.

What public ground offers is the view across the canal from the north. The loading gate faces the water, so the feature that explains the building happens to be the one thing visible from outside. Stay on the road.

Photograph within the limits of the lane. Please do not lean over the parapet to see the water or extend equipment past the boundary.

Buses from the east exit of JR Okayama Station run to Polytech Center Okayama-mae in roughly 23 minutes, and the walk from the stop takes 8. Niwase Station on the JR Sanyo Line lies 2.6 kilometres off, about 35 minutes on foot or 7 by taxi. No parking is provided.