Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Main House

Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Main House

The Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Main House (朝日屋原薬局主屋, Asahiya Hara Yakkyoku Shuoku) is a two-story shop-house built in 1912 facing west onto the old street in Honcho 2-chome, Shiki City, Saitama Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on July 1, 2003.

It is a timber building under a gabled roof, with the entrance on the long side in the Hirairi manner and a lean-to canopy, or Geya, projecting over the ground floor. The whole roof is laid with interlocking pantiles, and the ridge is built up high with stacked tiles. With a building area of 126 square meters it is the largest of the seven registered buildings at Asahiya Hara Pharmacy.

The Hara family built it when the business moved to this site, and part of it was extended in the middle of the Taisho era. The Agency for Cultural Affairs reads the Japanese name as shuoku, while Shiki City uses the more everyday omoya; both mean main house.

Why It Was Registered

The Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to a particular contrast: the ground floor is an open shopfront, but upstairs the windows are fitted with iron bars and the eaves are carried on projecting beams in the Degeta-zukuri manner, giving the front a weight quite different from the thick clay walls of a Dozo-zukuri merchant house.

Fire-resistant clay-walled shops were common in Kanto market towns of the period. The Asahiya shop-house is instead an ordinary timber townhouse, and it gets its solid presence from other means: the tall tiled ridge, the barred upper windows and the rhythm of beam ends under the eaves.

Open below, closed above. That split is the building's job description, shop at street level and family home upstairs, written directly into the facade.

What to Look For

Shiki City's newsletter notes that the shop sign and the central pillar are zelkova, while most of the rest is Japanese black pine. The lintel running across the shopfront is said to be a single length of black pine without a visible knot, and the glass in the shop's sliding doors is thought to date from the early years of the business.

From outside, look up first. The stacked ridge draws a heavy line along the top of the roof, and below it the barred upper windows and the ends of the eave beams line up at even intervals. Standing on the far side of the street lets you take in the shopfront and the ridge in a single view.

By the shop door stands a replica of a road marker put up in 1911 on the bank of the Nobidome irrigation channel. The Hara family had the copy made; the original now stands at Shikishima Shrine.

Visiting the Main House

The Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Main House is privately owned and the interior is not open to the public. The street facade can be seen from the public road on the west side, but you cannot enter the grounds or the building.

There is no published policy on photography. If you take pictures, do so from the street and bear in mind that people live here. Directions from the station are on the Asahiya Hara Pharmacy page.