Okuno Family Residence Tool Storehouse

A Meiji tool store facing the main house

Okuno Family Residence Tool Storehouse (奥野家住宅道具蔵, Okuno-ke Jūtaku Dōgugura) is an early-Meiji storehouse built between 1868 and 1882 in Kasugamotomachi, Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on May 2, 2017, under number 27-0670.

It stands south of the main house and faces north. Because the main house faces south, the two buildings look straight at each other across the yard. It is a single-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse with a long, narrow plan of 3 and a half by 1 and a half bays, covering 27 square meters.

An earthen canopy and a single room

The Okuno Family Residence Tool Storehouse has a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof with its door on the long side, Hirairi style, and its roof frame sits over the clay body in the okiyane manner. Across the front runs a canopy half a bay deep with an earth floor beneath it, so that tools could be taken in and out under cover even in the rain.

Inside is one room with a board floor. There is a single window in the west wall and another in the south wall. The exterior is Shikkui plaster over a skirt of boards, with a single hachimaki band beneath the eaves on the gable ends only.

The narrow plan and front canopy suit a store where farm tools and household equipment were lined up and fetched as needed.

Why it was registered

The Okuno Family Residence Tool Storehouse was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The agency describes it as giving order to the landscape inside the homestead, whereas the clothing and rice storehouses are credited with shaping the street. This building works on the inner yard.

Its date matters too. The main house and two of the storehouses are late Edo; the tool storehouse and the gatehouse are early Meiji, evidence that the family kept investing in the homestead after 1868.

What to look for

The appeal of the Okuno Family Residence Tool Storehouse lies in its restraint. The clothing storehouse carries a double plaster band on its gables; here there is just one. Seen side by side, the buildings show how the family matched the level of finish to what each store held.

Notice, too, how it faces the main house. From the front of the house the canopy of the tool store sits just across the yard, a practical arrangement that kept working routes short.

Visiting

The Okuno Family Residence Tool Storehouse stands inside a private homestead, south of the main house, and is not open. Being in the interior of the plot, little of it can be seen from the public road, and as of September 2026 no open days had been announced. Please do not enter the grounds. Directions are on the Okuno Family Residence (Hirakata) page.