A Fertilizer Merchant's Strongroom, Moved and Reopened
The Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse (旧山﨑家住宅（油長）内蔵, Kyū Yamazaki-ke Jūtaku Aburachō Uchigura) is a two-story earthen-walled storehouse in the Koshigaya district of Koshigaya City, Saitama Prefecture, built in the late Edo period and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 6 August 2025. It is one of the most recent additions to the register anywhere in Japan.
The Yamazaki family were among the leading households of Koshigaya-juku, a post station on the Nikkō Kaidō, the highway that carried shogunal processions north from Edo to the Tōshōgū shrine complex. Their shop name, Aburachō, comes from the oil trade. An early ancestor bought rapeseed in quantity from farmers in the surrounding villages and shipped it to Edo, and the name stuck long after the business shifted. A commercial directory of 1902 lists the house as a grain and fertilizer dealer; a 1916 guide to Koshigaya calls it a dealer in domestic and imported fertilizer.
The storehouse served as the family's kazaigura, the strongroom where household valuables and documents were kept rather than trade stock. Dating rests on two kinds of evidence. The building uses wrought iron nails of the pre-industrial type, and a work by the kokugaku scholar Hirata Atsutane carries a note in red ink recording a visit to the Yamazaki house in 1819. The Agency for Cultural Affairs assigns the structure to the late Edo period, giving a range of 1751 to 1830.
The Hirata connection is not incidental. Yamazaki Atsutoshi, the thirteenth head of the house, was a senior disciple of Hirata Atsutane and one of his financial backers. Hirata was among the most influential nativist thinkers of the nineteenth century, and his network of provincial patrons ran through merchant families exactly like this one.
Registered as a Standard of Design
Registered Tangible Cultural Properties are not the same thing as Important Cultural Properties or National Treasures. The latter are designated through a selective process that binds owners to seek permission before altering anything. Registration, introduced in 1996, works by notification and is intended to keep useful old buildings in circulation rather than to seal them away. Saitama Prefecture passed 218 registered structures with this listing.
Three criteria can support a registration. The most commonly applied is contribution to the historic landscape. This storehouse was registered under a different one: that it serves as a standard of design. The distinction matters, because a building moved from its original site cannot easily claim to shape a landscape it only recently joined. What was assessed here was the quality of the thing itself.
The official description is precise about what that quality consists of. The building faces north onto the street, two stories, gabled and pantiled, laid out hirairi with the entrance on the long side. The main ridge is built up unusually high. The exterior walls are finished in white plaster with mortar rendering to the lower band. Inside, each floor is a single undivided room, and the roof structure is a wagoya, a Japanese-style frame using vertical struts rather than trusses. Building area is 24 square meters, which is small, and the density of the construction against that footprint is the point.
The windows and doorways carry kakego-nuri fittings. In this technique the two leaves of a pair of doors are given interlocking stepped profiles where they meet, then plastered, so that closing them produces an airtight seal. It is the detail that made storehouses fireproof, and it takes a skilled plasterer to execute.
Visiting: The Storehouse Is Now a Cafe
This is the rare registered property you can sit down inside. A residential developer working the site chose to repair the storehouse rather than clear it, and the building was relocated by hikiya, the traditional method of moving a structure whole on rollers, before being donated to Koshigaya City. Since April 2017 the city has leased the land and building to the Aburacho Uchigura Management Council, formed in February 2017 from a local housing and town-planning NPO, the Koshigaya Chamber of Commerce, and a construction company.
The council runs Machikura Cafe on the ground floor, open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10:00 to 17:00, serving tea and Japanese sweets. During opening hours you can go up to the second floor free of charge without buying anything, which is an unusually generous arrangement for a building of this status. The council also holds consultations on vacant houses and land, and runs a study circle called Machikura Juku Salon on local history.
Go up to the second floor if you can. The single-room plan and the exposed wagoya roof frame are hard to read from photographs, and the struts standing on the tie beams show the logic of the structure immediately. The high ridge that the official description mentions makes sense only from underneath.
One practical note on addresses. The national database records the location as 4663-6 Koshigaya 3-chōme, while Koshigaya City's own pages give 2-19-5 Koshigaya 3-chōme. Both refer to the same building; the database figure appears to be the older land registry number. Navigate using the city's address. Koshigaya Station on the Tobu Skytree Line is the nearest access, and the surrounding streets retain enough of the old post town that Koshigaya declared its first local landscape agreement here.
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse?
- Yes. Machikura Cafe operates on the ground floor every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00. During those hours visitors may also go up to the second floor at no charge, with no obligation to order anything. Tea and Japanese sweets in the cafe are paid.
- When was the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse registered?
- It was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property on 6 August 2025, following a recommendation by the Council for Cultural Affairs in March of that year. The registration criterion applied was that the building serves as a standard of design, rather than the more common landscape contribution criterion.
- Why is the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse called Aburacho?
- Aburachō was the Yamazaki family's shop name. An ancestor bought rapeseed from farmers around Koshigaya and shipped it to Edo for oil pressing, and the name survived the family's later shift into grain and fertilizer dealing. The storehouse itself was the household strongroom of that fertilizer business.
- How old is the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the late Edo period, within a range of 1751 to 1830. The evidence includes hand-wrought iron nails and a red-ink annotation in a work by Hirata Atsutane recording his visit to the Yamazaki house in 1819. No precise construction year is documented.
- How do I reach the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse?
- Koshigaya Station on the Tobu Skytree Line is the nearest station, around forty minutes from Asakusa. Use the address 2-19-5 Koshigaya 3-chōme given by Koshigaya City rather than the older land registry number in the national database, since the two differ.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse (旧山﨑家住宅（油長）内蔵) |
|---|---|
| Location | 4663-6 Koshigaya 3-chōme, Koshigaya City, Saitama Prefecture (national database); 2-19-5 Koshigaya 3-chōme per Koshigaya City |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 11-0235 |
| Year Designated | Registered and gazetted 6 August 2025 |
| Quantity | 1 structure |
| Dimensions | Earthen-wall storehouse construction, two stories, tiled roof; building area 24 m² |
| Owner | Koshigaya City |
| Public Access | Open Fri, Sat, Sun 10:00 to 17:00 as Machikura Cafe; second floor viewable free of charge during those hours |
References
- National Database of Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015411
- Koshigaya City: Registration of the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse
- https://www.city.koshigaya.saitama.jp/citypromotion/rekisibunka/bunkazai/kunitourokukyuyamazakikejutaku.html
- Koshigaya City: Operation of the Former Yamazaki Family Residence (Aburacho) Inner Storehouse
- https://www.city.koshigaya.saitama.jp/kurashi_shisei/kurashi/sumai/sumaisodan/aburachouchikurarunei.html
- Machikura: Aburacho Uchigura Town Planning Consultation Office
- https://www.machi-kura.com/
Last verified: 2026.08.10