Kimura Family Residence Storehouse

The Kimura Family Residence Storehouse

The Kimura Family Residence Storehouse (木村家住宅土蔵, Kimura-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is a fireproof Dozo-zukuri storehouse built in 1825 on the estate of a Kawachi cotton merchant in Higashihonmachi, Yao City, Osaka Prefecture, and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 24 June 2021. It is joined to the west side of the main house by a passage, and the two buildings share the street front to the north.

Measuring 3 bays by 2 bays under a gabled roof of round and flat tiles, it covers 28 square meters. Of the four buildings on the estate, it is the one whose construction year is fixed earliest. It was listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

A prayer tablet and the "cotton store"

The date comes from a prayer tablet fixed to the ridge beam. According to the registration survey published by Yao City, the tablet bears the name of a priest of Hiraoka-sha, the first-ranked shrine of Kawachi Province, and the eighth month of 1825. Hiraoka-sha is today's Hiraoka Shrine in Higashiosaka.

On the family's geomancy plan, thought to date from 1842, this building beside the main house is labeled momen-gura, the cotton store. In a house that dealt in Kawachi cotton, the storehouse on the street carried the name of the trade. The survey also calls it a misegura, a shop storehouse.

Records note repairs to the white walls in 1977 and to the floor, walls and eaves in 2002.

How the Storehouse is built, and where the records disagree

In the Agency for Cultural Affairs' description, the walls of the Kimura Family Residence Storehouse are plastered in Shikkui right up to the eaves, with vertical boards, Tateita-bari, around the base. A sliding door on the south side forms the Tomae entrance, reached from the corridor that runs from the main house, and a window on the north side is plastered in up to its little roof.

The sources disagree on the number of floors. The structure field of the Agency's database and Yao City's survey both record a single storey, but the Agency's description calls it two-storeyed, with one room on each floor. They also differ on the roof frame: the description gives a simple Wagoya truss, while the survey describes a heavy ridge beam, an Ushibari, carrying sloping rafter beams. The question is open until the building is surveyed again or opened.

Inside is a single board-floored room, with a partition added later across the eastern bay.

Seeing the Kimura Family Residence Storehouse

The Storehouse is not open to the public, and its interior cannot be entered. Its north wall can be seen from the street.

That north face is white plaster above, cedar boards below, with one small window under a little plastered hood. It begins right after the wooden lattice of the main house, and the contrast of timber grille and sealed white wall exists only because the two buildings stand side by side on the street. The Agency singles out this shared frontage as the reason the storehouse matters to the townscape.

No guidance on photography has been issued, so photograph only from the street. Directions and the city's plans for the estate are on the Kimura Family Residence page.