Kobatake Family Residence West Storehouse

The storehouse attached to the main house

The Kobatake Family Residence West Storehouse (古畑家住宅西の蔵, Kobatake-ke Jūtaku Nishi-no-kura) is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse on a farmstead in Nakahata, Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, built in the Taisho era (1912-1925) and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 8 July 2008. It measures 4.1 metres by 3.9 metres, with a building area of 16 square metres.

It is joined to the north side of the main house, with its ridge running north to south, and it stands on the Ishigaki stone retaining wall along the western edge of the property. Of the five storehouses on the site, it is the only one built directly against the house. The New Storehouse continues beyond it to the north, and the west walls of the two form a single face above the stonework.

The roof is a Kirizuma-zukuri gable in Sangawara-buki pantiles. The walls are finished in white Shikkui lime plaster over a skirt of vertical boarding.

Why it was registered

The Kobatake Family Residence West Storehouse was registered, as number 27-0489, for its contribution to the historic landscape.

In its note on this building, the Agency for Cultural Affairs remarks that the roof is treated like those of the other storehouses: an okiyane, or placed roof, with the plaster carried up to wrap its eaves. That small phrase says a lot. A storehouse of the Taisho era was finished in exactly the manner of the two Edo-period stores on the road, so the household's storehouses share one finish regardless of when they were built.

What to look for

The West Storehouse changes character between outside and in. Outside, the lime plaster and boarded skirt are there to shed rain and resist fire. Inside, the walls are lined with horizontal boards set into the frame, so that nothing stored in the building rests against bare clay. Linings of this kind are generally explained as a way of keeping goods clear of damp and wall dust.

Like its neighbours, it carries a placed roof, a separately framed roof set down over the clay walls. Because the plaster wraps the eaves, the join between roof and wall is hard to spot from outside.

The stone base matters too. On a sloping site, the retaining wall lifts the storehouse at the western edge of the compound, and seen from the west, stone and white plaster stack one above the other across both this building and the New Storehouse.

Visiting

The Kobatake Family Residence West Storehouse stands behind the main house, deep inside the property. From the road on the east side it is screened by the house and the eastern buildings, so it is hard to see from public ground. The interior is not open and the grounds cannot be entered.

What the public can see of the Kobatake farmstead is mainly the Nagayamon Gate and the two east storehouses on the road. A trip made specifically to see the West Storehouse is not recommended.