Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse

What the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse is

The Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse (尾崎林太郎家住宅前蔵, Ozaki Rintarō-ke Jūtaku Maegura) is a 2-storey earthen storehouse built around 1924 in Kuroe, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 12, 2001. It stands on the south edge of the Ozaki family's plot of about 500 tsubo.

It is a Dozo-zukuri building with a gabled, pantiled roof whose ridge runs east to west, a building area of 92 square meters and two levels inside. The Agency for Cultural Affairs believes it was built at the same time as the three-story storehouse.

Its footprint is larger than that of the three-story storehouse, at 64 square meters, so it is the larger of the two storehouses in footprint.

Why the front storehouse was registered

The Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse was registered as a building that has become a model of its type. The Agency singles out techniques it shares with other storehouses in the area: a roof structure in which beams at both gable ends carry the ridge beam, with heavy rafters laid from it, and round ventilation windows in the gable walls.

Where the three-story storehouse was valued for its height, the front storehouse was valued for keeping the local way of building storehouses. Two storehouses of about the same date were registered for quite different reasons.

Heavy rafters and round gable windows

The thing to see in the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse is the roof frame. Beams at the two gable ends carry the ridge beam, and thick rafters run down from it to the eaves. A photograph on Cultural Heritage Online shows the heavy rafters closely spaced on either side of the ridge, with an upright member rising in the middle to support it. It is a spare frame in which the stout rafters do most of the work.

The other feature is the round window in each gable wall, there to let air through and keep damp from building up inside. The Agency counts it among the techniques common to the area, and from outside the round opening is an easy way to recognize a Kuroe storehouse.

An exterior photograph shows a board-clad storehouse wall facing a narrow lane, though the description does not say which side of the building it shows.

Seeing the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse

No information on interior visits to the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Front Storehouse could be found, and the roof frame is indoors.

Because the storehouse is on the south edge of the plot, its walls or gable windows may be visible from a lane to the south, but this has not been confirmed. Please stay off the grounds. Directions are on the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence page.