Former Umezu Dental Clinic Miso Storehouse

Nine Square Metres on the National Register

The Former Umetsu Dental Clinic Miso Storehouse (旧梅津歯科医院味噌蔵, also written Kyū Umetsu Shika-in Misogura) is a single-storey earthen-walled storehouse of the late Taishō period, between 1919 and 1926, standing at Tōkamachi in Kaminoyama City, Yamagata Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (登録有形文化財) on 17 February 2022 under number 06-0201.

Its building area is 9.2 square metres. That is a footprint of roughly three metres by three, about the size of a modest garden shed, and it makes this the smallest of the five buildings registered on the Umetsu property that February.

A reasonable first reaction is to ask why a shed for storing bean paste appears on a national register alongside temple halls and castle keeps. The answer lies in how the register is structured, and it is worth following, because it explains a good deal about how Japan has come to protect its ordinary buildings.

Two Different Reasons for Registration

Japan's registration system, created in 1996, admits buildings under three criteria. One covers structures that serve as models of design. Another covers structures difficult to reproduce. A third, and the relevant one here, covers structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

The five Umetsu buildings split between two of these. The clinic wing, the residence and the parlour storehouse were registered as models of design, judged on their own architectural merits. The grain storehouse and this miso storehouse were registered under the landscape criterion instead. Nothing about the miso storehouse claims distinction as a piece of design. What it does is hold up its corner of the compound.

The official description places it on the western edge of the site behind the main buildings and states plainly that it composes the appearance of the rear of the property. Take it away and the enclosure loses a wall. The grain storehouse performs the same office at the back, joined to the rear gate and forming the outer boundary along a lane of the old castle town.

This is registration applied to an ensemble rather than to individual monuments. Kaminoyama City lists the whole group as a single entry among its registered properties, covering buildings and structures together, and the Umetsu family's standing supplies the reason the group is coherent: the city records that its members served as physicians to the Kaminoyama domain in the Edo period, and that the dental practice opened during the Taishō era.

How the Building Is Made

The roof is gabled, covered in sheet iron, entered from the long side, and framed as a wagoya, the Japanese roof truss that carries its load on horizontal beams and short posts rather than on triangulated trusses. Walls are finished in lime plaster with the lower band, the koshi, rendered in mortar. Cement had become generally available to Japanese builders by the Taishō years, and a mortar dado on an otherwise traditional storehouse is a small marker of its date.

Inside, a sliding partition divides the space into a north and a south room. The north room has a boarded floor and a high window set up near the eaves. The doorway and window are closed with tsuchido, earthen doors, plastered like the walls themselves.

Every one of those choices makes sense for miso. Households across northern Japan made their own each year, packing soybeans, salt and rice or barley koji into cedar tubs and leaving them to ferment through the seasons. The process wanted a cool place, steady in temperature, dark rather than sunlit, and ventilated enough to shed moisture. A high window admits air without admitting much light. A raised floor lifts the tubs clear of damp. Earthen doors hold the interior temperature against the swings of a Yamagata year. The building is small because a family needed only so much miso, and it is built the way it is because miso is particular about where it sits.

Visiting, and What to Look at Instead

The property is privately owned and closed to the public. There is no admission and no interior access, and Kaminoyama City's list of cultural-property buildings open for viewing does not include the Umetsu group. This particular building stands behind the main house on the western edge of the site, so even its exterior is largely out of view from the road.

Being clear about that saves a wasted trip. The site is around five minutes on foot from Kaminoyama-Onsen Station on the JR Ōu Main Line, about 20 minutes from Yamagata Station by local train, and the Western-style clinic wing and the Japanese residence facing the street can be seen from outside. Photography should stay within what is visible from the public road.

For household storehouses you can actually enter, the Kaisendō in Kaminoyama is open as a museum and includes the former Hasegawa residence, and the nearby cocoon storehouse of the former Hasegawa silk mill is also registered. The four samurai houses on Nakachō street a short walk north include the Miwa residence, open to visitors, with the other three viewable from their gardens at no charge. Kaminoyama Castle, founded in 1535, holds a local history museum in its rebuilt keep, and the walk between these places passes through the same Tōkamachi district that the miso storehouse helps to frame.