Aoki Family Residence Warehouse

What Is the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse?

The Aoki Family Residence Warehouse (青木家住宅倉庫, Aokike Jūtaku Sōko) is a two-storey timber warehouse built in 1915 in Mima-cho, Mima City, Tokushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 1998. It was more than a store: it also housed the people who worked for the household.

Under a tiled roof it covers 104 square metres, making it the largest of the estate's ancillary buildings. It stands west of the main house, joined at its north end to the south side of Storehouse No. 2, and runs a long way down the western edge of the plot.

Why the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse Was Registered

The Aoki Family Residence Warehouse was registered on 9 October 1998 as number 36-0013, under the criterion for structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a long building deliberately kept low, which serves to close off the west side of the estate. Here the boundary is formed by a building rather than a wall, and that is what sets the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse apart.

Its double use as staff quarters says something about how the household lived. According to Mima City, the main house was a large eight-room home with formal reception rooms, an office, a kitchen and a cooking shed. The people who kept that house running slept and lived inside the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse.

What to Look For at the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse: Changing Finishes

The outside of the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse changes from face to face. The Agency's description gives Shitami-itabari weatherboarding on the west and south walls and Shinkabe, with posts exposed, on the east.

Weatherboarding of this kind lays long horizontal boards in overlapping courses, shedding rain well. The west wall faces out of the estate and the south wall closes the end of the long range; the boards can be read as protection for the outward-facing sides.

Storehouse No. 2, joined at the north end, is finished in white Shikkui plaster with tile cladding. The Aoki Family Residence Warehouse continues the same western boundary but switches to boarding, a change the Agency credits with giving the household layout some variety. Along one boundary the character shifts from white storehouse wall to timber.

The low profile deserves attention too. The Aoki Family Residence Warehouse has two storeys and 104 square metres of floor area, yet it stretches out sideways rather than rising, so that its ridge never competes with the great roof of the main house at the centre of the plot.

Seeing the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse

No opening of the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse interior has been announced (checked 1 October 2026), so visits are essentially a matter of looking at the outside.

The east wall, with its exposed posts, faces into the estate, so seeing it means being inside the grounds. If you get the chance during an event or a booking, stand on the west side of the main house and look along the full length of the Aoki Family Residence Warehouse to the point at its north end where timber gives way to the white wall of Storehouse No. 2.