Ishikawa Family Residence Raised Storehouse

A Storehouse Lifted Above the Floods

The Ishikawa Family Residence Raised Storehouse (石川家住宅段蔵, Ishikawa-ke Jūtaku Dangura) is an earthen-walled storehouse of around 1889 in Fukae-minami, Higashinari Ward, Osaka City, built on a tall stone base in the form known as a dangura and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 27 February 2023.

It stands in the northwest corner of the Ishikawa compound. The old word for northwest is inui, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs also refers to it as the inuigura, the northwest storehouse. It is a 2-storey dozo-zukuri building, thick clay walls over a timber frame, with a building area of just 16 square metres. It was repaired in the late Taisho era and again in 2016.

According to papers issued with the Council for Cultural Affairs recommendation of November 2022, the raised storehouse went up in the wake of flood damage in 1885. That year's recommendation picked it out as one of its featured examples from across Japan, presenting it as a storehouse built against floods in the home of Fukae's sedge hats.

Why It Was Registered

Like the main house, the raised storehouse was registered, as number 27-0865, as a model of its building type.

What earns it that status is the decision to lift the whole store clear of the ground. The storehouse itself is small; the tall stonework beneath it is what defines the building. The Agency's description pays close attention to that stonework: dressed stone laid in courses, with the outside corners built in sangi-zumi and given a gentle curve, which it calls careful work.

Sangi-zumi locks a corner by laying long, narrow blocks with their long and short faces alternating from course to course. It is the technique familiar from the corners of castle walls. Here it supports a single family's storehouse.

What to Look For

The Curve of the Stonework

Start with the corners of the stone base. Because the sangi-zumi corners are given a curve, their edges do not rise in a straight line but sweep slightly as they climb. Note, too, how high the storehouse floor sits above the ground.

The Storehouse Above

The storehouse is gabled, with its entrance in the gable end, and roofed in hongawara tiles, the heavy round-and-flat tiling also seen on temple roofs. The lower walls are faced with boards to protect the clay from rain and splashing.

Inside, each of the two floors is a single boarded room. The Agency records that the roof framing uses curved beams unusually thick for so small a building: naturally bent timbers put to work as they grew.

The interior is closed, so the roof framing cannot be seen.

Seeing the Raised Storehouse

The Ishikawa Family Residence Raised Storehouse is owned by Ishikawa Co., Ltd., and its interior is not open. Standing in the northwest corner, on the edge of the plot, it can be viewed from outside as far as the surroundings allow; the exterior photograph in the Agency's database was itself taken from the west.

Photograph from the public road only, and do not touch the stonework or walls or step onto the property. The 2022 recommendation papers also list the storehouse as an exhibition building of the Fukae Marugoto Museum, a residents' project, but whether it is ever opened could not be confirmed. Directions to the compound are on the Ishikawa Family Residence page.