Oga Family Residence Sundries Store and Mortar Shed

The building that holds the corner

The Oga Family Residence Sundries Store and Mortar Shed (大賀家住宅雑具物置及び臼場, Ōga-ke Jūtaku Zatsugu-monooki oyobi Usuba) 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 20 square metres. It abuts the south side of the front gate.

The Oga family traded tatami facing mats directly with Edo, and 9 buildings on their property are on the national register. While the main house and the detached reception room occupy the centre of the compound, the Oga Family Residence Sundries Store and Mortar Shed sits on the perimeter, and is one of the first things a passer-by sees.

Its name records two uses. The end nearer the gate stored miscellaneous household equipment; the southern end housed the mortar.

An L on plan, one bay deep

The plan is an L. The building runs south from the front gate and then turns, tracing the corner of the plot so that wall and boundary become the same line.

It is only 1 Ken deep. The ken is the module Japanese carpenters have worked to for centuries, roughly 1.8 metres, so this is a long box about as wide as a person with both arms out. Enough to set a mortar in and stack equipment behind it, and no more.

The roof is Kirizuma-zukuri, a straightforward gable, laid in Hongawarabuki tiling. On the courtyard side a pent roof of sheet iron runs along the eaves. The face that the street sees gets heavy ceramic tile; the face that only the household sees gets light metal. Even at this scale someone was deciding where the money went.

Small, and yet it reads as solid

The pleasure of the Oga Family Residence Sundries Store and Mortar Shed lies in the mismatch between its size and its presence. A shed 1 bay deep has no business looking substantial, and this one does, through the thickness of the tiling, the pitch of the roof and the lowness of the wall beneath it. The Agency for Cultural Affairs credits it with pulling the street corner of the compound into order.

The mortar end was where rice was hulled and pounded. A household shipping mats to Edo still had to feed itself, and putting that work immediately beside the formal entrance says something about how a merchant compound actually ran. Business address and large domestic establishment, on the same plot, sharing a wall.

The listing criterion here is contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The value is in continuity: wall and roof carrying on around the turn, so that the frontage never breaks.

Visiting the Oga Family Residence Sundries Store and Mortar Shed

The interior is off limits. The compound is a private home and the Okayama Prefectural Board of Education lists its public access as closed. There is no booking office and no application to make.

Even so, this is the easiest of the 9 registered buildings to follow from outside. Wall and roof run along the lane south of the gate, so the turn of the L can be traced on foot. Read it together with the gate.

Shoot from the lane. Behind that low wall people are going about their day, so give the boundary some room.

Two routes work. Buses from the east exit of JR Okayama Station reach Polytech Center Okayama-mae in roughly 23 minutes, leaving 8 minutes on foot. Otherwise walk the 2.6 kilometres from Niwase Station on the JR Sanyo Line, which takes about 35 minutes, or 7 by taxi. No parking.