Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse

What is the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse?

The Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse (吉田家住宅石蔵, Yoshida-ke Jūtaku Ishigura) is a rice storehouse built around 1872 in Futakuchi, Imizu City, Toyama Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on August 7, 2023.

It stands just east of the main house: 2 storeys, 49 square meters in building area, with a gabled roof of pan tiles (Sangawara-buki) entered on the long side (Hirairi) and a ridge running north to south. The agency's record adds that it comes with a connecting corridor, without saying where the corridor leads.

Why the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse was registered

The Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse was registered as a structure that would not be easy to reproduce, the only one of the four buildings on the estate listed under that heading.

What earns it that status is the way it was built. The ground floor is stone and the upper floor is timber, two kinds of load-bearing wall stacked one on the other. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles this out as an unusual masonry construction in stone and wood.

Stone below, stacked timber above

The ground floor of the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse is built of stone and holds a single room with an earthen floor (Doma). This was the rice store, and the heavy grain sat on the stone level.

The upper floor is one room of seirō-gumi, a technique in which squared timbers or thick planks are laid horizontally on top of each other so that the stack itself becomes the wall, much like a log building. That is a different idea from ordinary Japanese framing, where posts carry the load and walls are filled in between. Outside, the upper floor is finished in lime plaster (Shikkui), except on the west face, which is clad in weatherboarding (Shitami-itabari).

The roof is an okiyane (Okiyane), a separate roof set on top of the storehouse body. Stone, stacked timber and a detached roof: each layer of the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse uses its own material and method.

Iron-barred lean-tos and the west door

The door of the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse opens to the west. Lean-to roofs (Geya) project along the west and south sides and are fitted with iron bars; the agency notes that good-quality timber went into them.

From the west you see the barred lean-to in front and the weatherboarded upper floor rising above it. The white plaster should show on the other faces, but we could not confirm which sides are visible from where.

Visiting the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse

Because the Yoshida Family Residence Stone Storehouse sits east of the main house, toward the back of the estate, little more than its roof is likely to be visible from the street. We could not confirm whether the earthen-floored ground level or the timber upper room is shown to visitors.

A 2023 Imizu City record said the estate was to open to the public, but current opening days, fees and photography rules are unconfirmed. Ask before you go, and do not enter the property on other days. Directions are on the Yoshida Family Residence page.