Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Entrance Building

What the Entrance Building Is

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Entrance Building (田島漆店旧工場玄関棟, genkan-tō) is a single-story wooden entrance hall built in 1953 in Funao, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, and it became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 5, 2019. It served as the front door of the lacquer refinery run by Tajima Urushiten, and it stands toward the southern end of the site's west edge, facing the street.

The building covers 40 square meters under a gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) roof of corrugated slate. Inside is a single room with a concrete floor and no ceiling. Everyone arriving passed through it, whether they were headed for the family's main house at the back or for the factory floor.

What you see is the second entrance building on this spot. According to Wakayama Prefecture, an earlier one stood here until the 1953 rebuilding, which makes this the youngest of the five registered buildings on the site.

Why It Was Registered

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Entrance Building was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that, as the main entrance, it conveys what the old lacquer factory looked like to anyone arriving. The value lies in how the works presented itself, not in fine design.

This is a practical building with almost no ornament, except on the front. The base of the facade is finished in Araidashi, washed mortar with the aggregate exposed, and the remaining walls are rendered in yellow tinted mortar that carries on up into the eaves soffit. The prefecture reads this as the treatment you would give the building that greeted customers. The spending was concentrated where it would be seen.

The roof frame is a steel truss resting on wooden walls, which kept the floor free of posts. Across the yard, the Filling Hall had its timber roof frame replaced with steel trusses in 1958. Read together, the two buildings show a postwar factory turning to steel to open up its interiors.

What to Look For

Begin on the street. The washed mortar at the base has a gritty, pebbled surface that is obvious once you step close. Above it the yellow render wraps round under the eaves, so when you look up the overhang stays light instead of falling into shadow.

Notice the neighbors, too. Immediately south of the Tajima Urushiten entrance building is the brick Product Storehouse from the Taisho era, and these two buildings together with the main house make up the frontage on the west street. From the pavement you can see a mortar-rendered Taisho brick wall and the yellow walls of 1953 side by side.

If you get the chance to go inside, look up. With no ceiling boards, the thin steel members of the triangular truss are fully exposed. Underfoot is a plain concrete floor, as practical as the rest of a factory entrance.

Visiting

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Entrance Building stands on private land, and there is no notice of the building's interior being opened on its own (checked September 16, 2026). The washed-mortar base and yellow walls can be seen from the street on the west side.

The grounds are open mainly during the hours of the café that operates on the site and during events. Which rooms you can enter depends on how the buildings are in use at the time, so ask the staff if you want to see the steel truss. No official photography rules are published; ask before taking pictures indoors. Directions and opening details are collected on the Tajima Urushiten Former Factory page.