Asahiya Hara Pharmacy

Asahiya Hara Pharmacy: A Merchant Estate on the Old Hikimata Street

Asahiya Hara Pharmacy (朝日屋原薬局, Asahiya Hara Yakkyoku) is a family pharmacy in Honcho 2-chome, Shiki City, Saitama Prefecture, founded around 1887; seven of its buildings, led by the shop-house built when the business moved here in 1912, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on July 1, 2003.

The name splits into two parts. Asahiya, meaning roughly the Rising Sun shop, is the trade name, and Hara is the surname of the family who opened it. Read as a single word, it is easy to get wrong.

Each building was registered separately, so the main house, storehouse, storage shed, Western-style building, annex, gate and wall, and the Shinonome Fudoson shrine carry their own registration numbers, 11-0049 through 11-0055. Shiki City describes Asahiya Hara Pharmacy as a typical example of the prosperous pharmacies of the Meiji and Taisho eras and as a rare window onto everyday life at the time.

How the Business Began

According to the city's public newsletter, the founder, Hara Rinkichi, moved here from Hamasaki in what is now Asaka City around 1887 and set up shop. The city website gives the founding more loosely as sometime in the Meiji 20s, so the date is best treated as approximate.

Medicine was only part of the stock. From the start the shop specialized in new chemical products, above all paints and dyes, and also sold industrial chemicals, beer, glass and other sundries. Most goods were bought in Nihonbashi in Tokyo and shipped by riverboat up the Shingashi River from Hanakawado in Asakusa to the landing at Shiki. Asahiya sold them over its own counter and wholesaled them toward Tokorozawa, Hanno and Shakujii.

In 1912 the shop moved to its present site and put up a new main house. The storehouse, storage shed and the small shrine to Fudo went up around the same time, and part of the main house was extended in the middle of the Taisho era. A Western-style room followed in 1932 and a two-story annex in 1934, completing the estate as it stands now in a little over 20 years.

Each generation leaned further into pharmacy. The second head, Hara Rinzo, qualified as a pharmacist, made household remedies and sold medicines to doctors. The third, Hara Shoji, trained in pharmacy, researched pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Tokyo and became a professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, receiving the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1993.

On the Site of a Village Headman's House

The Honcho district was known in the Edo period as Hikimata-juku, a market and post town. The city newsletter records that in the closing years of that era this plot belonged to the Hoshino family, who served as headmen of Hikimata. Hoshino Han'emon, headman for about three years from August 1847, kept a diary describing Hikimata and Edo in detail, and that diary is now a Shiki City designated cultural property.

The Nobidome irrigation channel once ran along the front of the shop, and beside it stood a road marker erected in 1911. When the channel was covered over, the marker was moved to the grounds of Shikishima Shrine; the one you see outside Asahiya Hara Pharmacy today is a replica made privately by the Hara family.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The plot is long and narrow, running east from the street. The main house faces the street on the west side, and the gate and wall continue south of it to form the estate's frontage. The small Western-style building stands on the south side of the main house.

Behind the main house, roughly in the middle of the plot, is the storehouse. East of it comes the storage shed, then the Shinonome Fudoson shrine, and at the far eastern end the annex.

Shop at the front, then storage, then the household shrine, then family rooms at the back: the sequence suits a town lot with a narrow street frontage and great depth. Each building has its own page covering its structure and details.

Visiting Asahiya Hara Pharmacy

Asahiya Hara Pharmacy is privately owned and the interiors are not open to the public. Both Shiki City and the Shiki tourism association list it as closed to visitors, so what you can do is look at the exterior from the public street. Please do not enter the grounds.

From the street you see mainly the shopfront of the main house and the gate and wall that run south of it. The storehouse and the buildings behind it stand in the middle and eastern end of the plot and are almost impossible to see from the road. There is no published policy on photography; if you take pictures, do so from the street and remember that this is a lived-in home.

The nearest station is Shiki on the Tobu Tojo Line. From the East Exit the estate is about 1.5 kilometers to the north, a walk of 15 to 20 minutes. Alternatively, take a Kokusai Kogyo or Tobu Bus West service from Shiki Station East Exit heading toward Shiki City Hall and get off at Ichiba Sakaue, which is 1 to 2 minutes on foot from the shop.