The Storehouse Built When Business Was Good
The New Storehouse of the former Enman Orimono weaving works (旧遠万織物（創匠庵）新蔵, Kyū Enman Orimono (Sōshōan) Shinkura) is a two-storey earthen-walled storehouse at Montōmachi 1-chōme in Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture, built in the early Shōwa period between 1926 and 1945 and listed as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 3 April 2020.
Three registered buildings share this plot, and they arrived in an order that reads like a company history. The Front Storehouse went up in 1873, when Enman Orimono was a Meiji-era weaving house working looms behind its own residence. The Main House followed in the late Taishō era, after two fires in 1917 and 1919 had flattened much of central Yonezawa. The New Storehouse came last. By the time it was built, the household already had a storehouse. Building a second one is a statement about volume.
Yonezawa's weaving trade sat on foundations laid in the eighteenth century, when the domain lord Uesugi Yōzan promoted textile production to repair the domain's finances, starting with ramie and shifting to silk as sericulture spread. The independent manufacturers who came out of that policy were still running the industry in the Shōwa years, and this small building, about 44 square metres in footprint, is what one of their better decades looked like.
Registered, Not Designated
The New Storehouse holds registration number 06-0196, entered in the ninety-fifth round on 3 April 2020, under the criterion that it contributes to the historic landscape of the country and in the category of secondary industry, buildings. The Main House (06-0194) and the Front Storehouse (06-0195) were registered the same day.
Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties dates from 1996 and works differently from the designation system that produces National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties. Designation picks a small number of outstanding buildings and controls them tightly. Registration casts a wide net over buildings of roughly fifty years or more that give a locality its character, and asks comparatively little of owners beyond notification before major exterior changes. The trade-off is deliberate: looser rules mean more buildings stay in use rather than being demolished for want of a viable future.
For this property, registering all three buildings rather than the most impressive one is the point. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record for the New Storehouse identifies its value in exactly those terms, as a component of the residential and working compound of a textile manufacturer. A single storehouse is a building. Three buildings in sequence are a business.
Where Tradition Meets Glass
The New Storehouse stands northwest of the Front Storehouse, and a corridor runs from the north face of the Main House to the kuramae, the anteroom space in front of the storehouse. You could move goods between house and store without stepping into a Yonezawa winter, which is not a trivial convenience in a city that measures snow in metres.
Its ridge runs east to west and the entrance is on the gable end. Above sits an okiyane, a pantile roof built as an independent structure over the earthen mass rather than resting on it, so that rain never reaches the layer that does the fireproofing. The base of the walls repeats the red-tiled namako-kabe of the older storehouse: square tiles in a diagonal grid, joints raised in thick plaster ridges. Red rather than the usual black is a local choice, and it visibly ties the two storehouses together.
Above the base, the treatment changes. Column forms are expressed at the four corners, standing out from the wall plane like pilasters, and a hachimaki, a projecting plaster band, runs round the upper wall. Neither element is structural. Both are there to give a windowless white box some articulation, and they suggest a builder thinking about how the thing would look from the yard.
The windows are where the date shows. Snow shielding is built into the surrounds, and glass is set into the openings. That is a very different answer from the Front Storehouse of 1873, where the south windows close with thickly plastered kakego-nuri shutters that seal against sparks. Sixty years apart, the same family solved the same problem twice, once with lime and once with glass. Inside, the roof is framed as a king-post truss, according to the Yamagata prefectural cultural property record, a Western structural type that had become ordinary in Japanese industrial building by the Shōwa period. The Main House has exposed truss framing in its former kitchen wing too. Truss carpentry was clearly available to whoever worked on this property.
Access, and What Is Open
Nothing here is open to visitors at present. The compound is privately owned and occupied. For many years it housed a workshop called Sōshōan, which practised and taught harakata sashiko, the geometric quilted stitching developed by wives of the Uesugi domain's lower-ranking retainers on the outskirts of the castle town, and gave the property the name in parentheses in its official title. Sōshōan closed on 20 November 2024. The Yamagata prefectural cultural property record still shows public access, which describes the position before that date.
Because the New Storehouse sits at the back of the plot, northwest of the Front Storehouse, it is the least visible of the three from the street. Expect a glimpse of roof and upper wall rather than a clear view. Photograph from the public road only, and treat the property as the private home it is.
Reaching the site is easy: about 1.6 kilometres west of JR Yonezawa Station, a walk of some 20 to 25 minutes, or a bus to the Uesugi Jinja-mae stop, roughly 220 metres away, or Montōmachi, about 210 metres. Uesugi Shrine and Matsugasaki Park on the former castle grounds begin just to the west, and the walk between them takes in a good deal of what remains of the castle town.
Anyone who came for the textile story has better options within a few hundred metres. The Yonezawa Mingeikan, at Montōmachi 1-1-16 on the same block, displays looms and reconstructed early cloth and is generally open 10:00 to 16:00 for around 500 yen. The main building of the former Yonezawa Higher Technical School, built in 1910 for a school founded on dyeing and weaving and an Important Cultural Property since 2 June 1973, admits visitors free on weekdays from 11:00 to 16:00 with advance arrangement and closes in winter. Uesugi Kinenkan, a registered Tangible Cultural Property rebuilt in 1925 after fire destroyed the earlier count's residence, lies a short walk west. Confirm hours before travelling, and expect winter closures across the board.
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Q&A
- When was the New Storehouse of the former Enman Orimono built, and how does it relate to the other two buildings?
- It dates from the early Shōwa period, between 1926 and 1945, making it the youngest of the three. The Front Storehouse was built in 1873 and the Main House in the late Taishō era. All three were registered together on 3 April 2020.
- Can the New Storehouse of the former Enman Orimono (Sōshōan) be visited?
- No. The property is a private residence and the Sōshōan sashiko workshop that formerly received visitors closed on 20 November 2024. The storehouse stands at the rear of the plot and is only partly visible from the public street.
- What kind of roof structure does the New Storehouse of the former Enman Orimono have?
- The Yamagata prefectural cultural property record describes the roof framing as a king-post truss. Externally the roof is an okiyane, a pantile structure set independently over the earthen walls so that rain does not reach them.
- What makes the New Storehouse of the former Enman Orimono look different from the Front Storehouse?
- Both share red-tiled namako-kabe at the base of the walls, but the New Storehouse expresses column forms at its four corners with a projecting plaster band around the upper wall, and its window openings have built-in snow shielding and glass rather than the plastered shutters of 1873.
- How do I get to the former Enman Orimono site, and what is nearby?
- It is about 1.6 kilometres west of JR Yonezawa Station, 20 to 25 minutes on foot, or a bus to Uesugi Jinja-mae or Montōmachi. Uesugi Shrine and Matsugasaki Park adjoin to the west, and the Yonezawa Mingeikan textile museum stands on the same block.
Basic Information
| Name | New Storehouse, former Enman Orimono (Sōshōan) / 旧遠万織物（創匠庵）新蔵 |
|---|---|
| Location | 1028 Montōmachi 1-chōme, Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (building); category: secondary industry, buildings; registration number 06-0196 |
| Year Designated | Registered 3 April 2020 (95th round of registration) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Two-storey earthen-walled construction, pantile roof, building area approximately 44 square metres |
| Owner | Private individual |
| Public Access | No interior access. Privately occupied; the Sōshōan sashiko workshop on the site closed on 20 November 2024. Situated at the rear of the plot with limited visibility from the street. |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Kyū Enman Orimono (Sōshōan) Shinkura
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00013217
- Yamagata Prefecture Cultural Property Search: Kyū Enman Orimono (Sōshōan) Shinkura
- https://www.pref.yamagata.jp/cgi-bin/yamagata-takara/?m=detail&id=1938
- Yamagata Prefecture Official Tourism Site: Sashiko Kōbō Sōshōan (closed)
- https://yamagatakanko.com/attractions/detail_10694.html
- Yonezawa City: Yonezawa Textiles
- https://www.city.yonezawa.yamagata.jp/soshiki/5/1019/2/657.html
- Yamagata University Faculty of Engineering: Former Yonezawa Higher Technical School Main Building
- https://www.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/school/old-yonezawa/guide/
- Yonezawa City Library: The Taishō-Era Yonezawa Fires and Reconstruction
- https://www.library.yonezawa.yamagata.jp/wordp/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/000572c170962b061c631bb4ab3e241d.pdf
Last verified: 2026.07.30