Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Western-Style Building

Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Western-Style Building

The Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Western-Style Building (朝日屋原薬局洋館, Asahiya Hara Yakkyoku Yōkan) is a small single-story Western-style room built in 1932 on the south side of the main house at Asahiya Hara Pharmacy in Honcho 2-chome, Shiki City, Saitama Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on July 1, 2003.

It has a hipped roof of Japanese pantiles and an entrance porch on the west side. Inside is a single room, with a veranda-like corridor along the east wall. At 27 square meters it is the smallest building on the estate apart from the household shrine.

It arrived 20 years after the 1912 main house, and two years later, in 1934, a two-story annex went up at the back of the plot.

Why It Was Registered

The Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Western-Style Building was registered as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out its walls: smooth Shikkui plaster, with the base and the frames around doors and windows finished in Araidashi, a washed artificial stone that gives a lively edge to an otherwise elegant exterior.

Araidashi is made by troweling on cement mixed with fine gravel and rinsing the surface before it fully sets, so the stones stand out. It was a favorite on houses and shops in the early Showa years. White plaster and a band of gritty stone: two textures that give a very small building a crisp Western outline.

What to Look For

The roof is Japanese tile, while the walls and porch speak Western. That mix is typical of the early Showa years, when adding a single Western-style room to a traditional home was a popular choice.

The veranda corridor on the east side is a telling detail. A true Western house would not wrap a room in an engawa-like passage; here the Japanese habit of a buffer between room and garden carried over. No public record explains what the room was used for.

The real pleasure is in the band of washed stone around the base and openings, and the sharp line where it meets the white plaster.

Visiting the Western-Style Building

The Asahiya Hara Pharmacy Western-Style Building is privately owned and not open to the public. It stands south of the main house, inside the line of the gate and wall, so it is hard to see as a whole from the street. Please do not enter the grounds.

There is no published policy on photography; keep to what is visible from the road. Directions are on the Asahiya Hara Pharmacy page.