Former Matsui Family Villa (Ganko Rokusanen) North

A two-story earthen storehouse with a modern roof

The north storehouse stands in the northwest corner of the grounds, set in a line just north of its smaller companion, the south storehouse. It is a dozo, a thick-walled earthen storehouse, here built two stories high at 6.7 meters along the front and 4.8 meters deep, under a gabled roof of heavy hongawara tile. A single doorway opens toward the east on its southern face. Its date falls in the late Taisho years, between 1919 and 1926.

The construction mixes old and new. The walls follow the traditional dozo method, plastered and finished with a thick band, the hachimaki, running below the eaves; but the roof frame inside is a king-post truss, a Western carpentry import that had entered Japanese building by this date. On the lane side to the north, the lower wall is faced in vertical boarding and the base in cut stone, a sober treatment that keeps the building in scale with the street behind it.

Why it is registered

The storehouse was registered nationally in 2012 with the rest of the estate, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape. Its interest lies in the meeting of two building cultures in one small structure: the heavy earthen wall of a long Japanese tradition, carrying a roof framed by the truss of the industrial age. Together with the main house and the south storehouse, it completes the working back of the residence.

What to look for

Today the two storehouses of the estate serve as dining rooms, known from their finishes as the black store and the white store. Their heavy doors remain, and inside, the structural timber is left exposed rather than hidden behind plaster. Seen from the northern lane, the vertical boarding and the cut-stone base give the building a settled, grounded look that rewards a slow walk along the boundary.