Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse

What Is the Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse?

The Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse (辻本店衣装蔵, Tsuji Honten Ishōgura) is a 2-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse of the mid-Meiji period (1883 to 1897), attached to the north end of the shop and main house at the Tsuji Honten sake brewery in Katsuyama, Maniwa City, Okayama Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. As the name says, it held the family's clothing and household finery.

With a footprint of 58 square meters, the Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse is the smallest of the brewery's storehouses. It stands on a cut-stone base under a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof of Sangawara-buki tiles.

Registered for Craft That Is Hard to Reproduce

Eight of the nine Tsuji Honten buildings were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse is the exception: it was registered as a structure that would be difficult to reproduce. What earned it that status is less its place in the streetscape than the skill of the plasterers and carpenters who built it.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out the windows on the west side, facing the street. The inner faces of the earthen fire shutters are decorated in Kote-e, relief pictures modelled in plaster with a trowel, and the brackets holding up the eaves are finely carved. The brewery says the relief shows a dragon and a tiger. Making work like this again today would take a plasterer of real ability.

The roof is of the okiyane type: the storehouse body is sealed in earth and plaster, and a separate roof is then set on top of it. If the roof burned in a fire, the sealed box and its contents had a chance of surviving.

What to Look For on the Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse

The walls of the Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse are plastered white, with Namako-kabe tiling at the base of both floors and up the corners. Armoring the corners as well as the base protects the parts most easily knocked and weathered, and it frames the whole building in a grid pattern.

The door is on the east side, where a tiled eave shelters an open veranda. This was the side the family used to bring kimono in and out, and it is plain beside the decorated street windows. The west side was dressed for the town; the east side was for daily use.

Visiting the Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse

The interior of the Tsuji Honten Clothing Storehouse is not open. What you can see is the west front on the old Izumo road. Because the kote-e relief is on the inside of the shutters, it is visible only when they stand open; the carved brackets can be seen under the eaves whether the shutters are open or shut.

The east door and veranda face the private yard and cannot be seen from the street. Directions and visiting conditions for the whole site are on the Tsuji Honten Sake Brewery page.