Katagiri Seiryudo West Storehouse

A Storehouse Carried Down from Osaka

Katagiri Seiryudo West Storehouse (片桐棲龍堂西ノ蔵, Katagiri Seiryūdō Nishi-no-kura) is a late Edo storehouse at the Katagiri Seiryudo kampo pharmacy in Nishiminatocho, Sakai Ward, Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, moved here in 1873 from Nipponbashi in central Osaka and entered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 18 October 2000. It is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri building, earthen-walled and fire-resistant, with a tiled roof and a footprint of 47 square metres.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates its construction to the late Edo period, giving a window of 1751 to 1829. That means the storehouse served in Osaka for at least half a century before it was dismantled, carried south to Sakai and reassembled.

It stands west of the Main House, across the approach path. The ridge runs east to west over a frame 3 bays long and 4 bays deep, with a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Hongawarabuki tiling and the entrance in the gable end. Next to its siblings, the Middle Storehouse of 12 square metres and the East Storehouse of 17 square metres, it is a much larger building.

Why a Relocated Building Was Registered

Katagiri Seiryudo West Storehouse was registered as difficult to reproduce, under number 27-0110. In the Agency's classification the other buildings of the compound are listed as residential, but this one alone falls under tertiary industry, the category for commerce and services.

The reason is its present use. The storehouse houses the family's kampo museum, which Sakai City describes as one of the few specialist museums of kampo medicine in Japan and one well regarded by specialists at home and abroad. Alongside medical papers from the late Edo period onward, the Katagiri family has collected medical books, shop signboards for medicines and other material on the history of healing.

Relocated buildings usually lose the memory of where they came from and gain a new purpose where they land. This one began as a merchant's storehouse in Nipponbashi, became the store of a physician's household in Sakai, and now holds that household's archive. One building carries both the traffic between Osaka and Sakai and a family's long accumulation of medical knowledge.

What to Notice

Size is the first thing. The depth of 4 bays exceeds the length of 3, so the gable end with the door is the broad face of the building. A two-storey storehouse under a heavy tiled roof faces the Main House across the path.

Hongawarabuki alternates flat and rounded tiles and was the more prestigious roofing method; the simpler interlocking pantiles used on most townhouses give a flatter surface. All three storehouses in the compound are roofed this way, but on the West Storehouse, the largest of them, the weight of that roof is most apparent.

Visiting

The kampo museum in Katagiri Seiryudo West Storehouse is not open to the general public. The Osaka Cultural Properties Navi lists it as not open for viewing, and Sakai City asks that the Katagiri Seiryudo buildings be seen from outside only. The storehouse lies within the property west of the Main House, and how much of it can be seen from the public lane has not been confirmed.

For a look at the collection, Sakai City organised an exhibition, The World of Katagiri Seiryudo's Medicine Signboards, at the Yamaguchi Family House, one of its historic townhouse museums, scheduled from 2 September to 5 October 2026 and centred on Edo and Meiji signboards and other medical material handed down in the family. Directions to the compound are on the Katagiri Seiryudo page.