Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Product Storehouse

What the Product Storehouse Is

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Product Storehouse (田島漆店旧工場商品蔵, shōhin-gura) is a single-story brick storehouse built in 1922 in Funao, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, and it became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 5, 2019. It stands in the southwest corner of the site, facing north, and was built to hold finished lacquer products waiting to be shipped.

It is the oldest of the five registered buildings at the former Tajima lacquer works. The storehouse covers 50 square meters. Its gabled roof (Kirizuma-zukuri) is laid with Sangawara-buki pantiles, and the brick walls are rendered in mortar both inside and out.

It did not start out as a single-story building. Wakayama Prefecture records that it was originally 2 stories tall and was altered in 1953 for use as an office, when the upper floor was taken out. The change of use reached all the way into the structure.

Why It Was Registered

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Product Storehouse was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points out that, as the store for goods awaiting shipment, it forms the streetscape together with the Entrance Building and the main house. The west side of the site faces the street, and the storehouse closes the southern end of that frontage.

The other part of its value is the way the exterior is composed. Each corner carries a pilaster-like pier, called a hashiragata, projecting slightly from the wall, and a horizontal band known as a hachimaki runs around the top of the walls beneath the eaves. Together they frame what would otherwise be plain rendered surfaces. The Agency's description calls the result a modern exterior.

The same compound also holds the New Storehouse of 1934, built 12 years later in the traditional clay-walled manner. The raw lacquer went into a building that looks like a conventional kura, while the finished goods went into brick with Western-style trim. A company dealing in one of Japan's oldest materials used both approaches side by side, and that contrast is the best way into this building.

What to Look For

From outside, study the outline. The corner piers and the top band throw shallow shadows across the flat mortar, so the box-like building appears drawn inside a frame. The relief is easiest to read on a clear afternoon, when light comes from the west across the street side.

Then compare walls and roof. The walls speak a Western vocabulary, yet the roof is a Japanese gable covered in pantiles. That blend is what gives the Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Product Storehouse its character.

Immediately north stands the Entrance Building, rebuilt in 1953, the same year the storehouse lost its upper floor. The brick store of 1922 and the wooden entrance of 1953 face the street together, and between them they show when the public face of the works took its present form.

Visiting

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory Product Storehouse is on private land, and there is no notice of its interior being opened to the public (checked September 16, 2026). The piers and band can be seen from the street along the west side of the site.

Any chance to go inside would come during the hours of the on-site café or during events, and whether this building is open then depends on how it is being used. If you want to see the interior left after the upper floor was removed, ask the people running the site. No photography rules are published, so ask before shooting indoors. Transport, parking and café days are covered on the Tajima Urushiten Former Factory page.