Former Honjo Commercial Bank Brick Warehouse

A Bank Vault Built for Silkworm Cocoons

The Former Honjo Commercial Bank Brick Warehouse (旧本庄商業銀行煉瓦倉庫, Kyu Honjo Shogyo Ginko Renga Soko, also written Kyū-Honjō Shōgyō Ginkō Renga Sōko) is a two-storey brick warehouse at 1-5-16 Ginza in Honjo City, Saitama Prefecture, built in the Meiji era around 1894 and entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 12 June 1997.

The interior measures roughly 31 metres by 8.5 metres across the inner faces of the walls, a long rectangular room with a floor area of 279 square metres. Nothing about the proportions suggests display. This was a strongroom, and what it guarded was not coin but cocoons.

Honjo was the largest of the sixty-nine post stations on the Nakasendo, the inland highway linking Edo with Kyoto, and the last one in the old province of Musashi. From the closing years of the Edo period the town turned into a collection point for raw cocoons. When the Nippon Railway reached Honjo in 1883, the trade acquired a rail connection to the ports, and the local economy reorganised itself around silk.

Honjo Commercial Bank opened in 1894 and lent money against cocoons and raw silk. Borrowers handed over their stock as collateral, and the bank needed somewhere to keep it. Cocoons are perishable, flammable, and at the time extremely valuable. The building answers all three problems at once.

Look at the window openings. They sit in matched pairs on opposite walls, which allows air to cross the room rather than stagnate in it. Each opening carries an iron shutter for fire, a wire screen for insects, and a plaster-faced board door for temperature. Below floor level, cast-iron frames hold further ventilation openings. The walls use brick from the Nippon Renga Seizo works at Fukaya, a short distance to the east, founded in 1888 with backing from the industrialist Shibusawa Eiichi.

One point of record needs stating plainly. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the construction date as approximately 1894 (Meiji 27). Honjo City and the local tourism association both give 1896 (Meiji 29) as the year the warehouse was completed, treating 1894 as the year the bank itself opened for business. The agency's entry is the authoritative national record, and the two-year gap is best read as the distance between founding a bank and finishing its warehouse.

Registered, Not Designated: What the Status Means

Japan operates two parallel systems for protecting buildings, and confusing them is easy. National Treasures (国宝) and Important Cultural Properties (重要文化財) are designated: the state selects them, and alterations require permission. Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (登録有形文化財) are registered: owners notify the authorities before making substantial changes to the exterior, but the day-to-day burden is far lighter. The register was created in 1996 specifically to catch buildings from the Meiji period onward that were disappearing faster than the designation system could act.

This warehouse carries registration number 11-0002 and joined in the third round of registrations nationwide, with the formal public notice issued on 24 June 1997. Being second on Saitama Prefecture's list places it among the earliest buildings anywhere in Japan to enter the system.

The registration criterion applied is the first of the three available: that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency classifies it under industry and commerce rather than architecture proper, which is an accurate reading. Its interest lies less in stylistic ambition than in the completeness with which a working problem was solved in brick.

The roof carries a king post truss, a European framing system in which a central vertical post ties the ridge to the tie beam below. Japanese carpentry had no traditional equivalent for spanning this kind of width without intermediate columns, and its adoption here, on a provincial commercial building of the 1890s, shows how quickly imported structural methods travelled beyond the major cities.

What You Will Find Inside Today

The building is open to the public free of charge, seven days a week, from 9am to 7pm, closing only from 29 December to 3 January. Honjo City owns and runs it, and no reservation is needed simply to walk in and look. The telephone number is 0495-71-6685.

That access is recent. The warehouse spent roughly two years closed for seismic strengthening before reopening on 1 April 2017 as a community facility. The ground floor now serves as exhibition and gathering space; the second floor is a multipurpose hall that requires a use permit, with hourly charges starting at 400 yen and room for around 70 people. Fourteen parking spaces are available, one of them accessible.

Visitors reading older sources should be prepared for a surprise. The national database still describes the building as a confectionery shop and factory, which was its use before the city acquired it. That entry has not caught up with the 2017 conversion.

Go upstairs if the hall is unlocked. The king post trusses are exposed overhead, and from directly beneath them the span reads very differently than it does from a photograph. On the ground floor, the brickwork has been left visible rather than plastered over, so the coursing and the mortar joints are there to be examined at arm's length. Staff are usually on site; asking before photographing is the courteous approach, and they can also tell you what is currently on display.

The walk from JR Honjo Station on the Takasaki Line takes about eight minutes. The route follows the old Nakasendo, and continuing along the same street brings you to the Former Honjo Nakamachi Post Office of 1934, another registered property, with the prefecturally designated Moroi Family Residence of around 1880 standing behind it. Three buildings, three decades apart, all on one stretch of highway.