Yamashiroya Storehouse

A Late-Meiji Storehouse on a Hot Spring Lane

Yamashiroya Nigura (山城屋荷蔵, also written Yamashiroya Nikura), a goods storehouse in the Yumachi district of Kaminoyama City, Yamagata Prefecture, was built in the late Meiji period between 1898 and 1912 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 28 October 2011. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a two-storey building of dozo-zukuri earthen-wall construction, 9.4 metres along the ridge by 4.7 metres across, with a building area of 48 square metres.

It sits along the passage on the east side of the Yamashiroya compound, behind and to one side of the inn's guest wing. The word nigura means a store for freight rather than for valuables or rice. An inn of this size needed somewhere to put bedding, tableware, charcoal, lacquerware, seasonal decorations and the crated goods that arrived by cart. That is what this building was for, and its placement along a service passage rather than facing the street reflects the job.

Yumachi is the oldest quarter of the Kaminoyama hot spring. Local tradition dates the discovery of the spring to 1458, and the lanes here were laid out around the bathhouses long before the town acquired its castle-town character. Storehouses of this kind, plastered white and set close to the road, are part of what gives the quarter its texture. The Agency's assessment says the building lends atmosphere to the streetscape of the spa town, and that is the entire case for registering it.

How the Building Is Made

Dozo-zukuri means a timber frame packed with thick layers of clay and finished in lime plaster. The result is a fire-resistant box: when a neighbour's house burned, the storehouse was expected to survive with its contents intact. Fires were frequent in timber towns, and a merchant's storehouse was insurance made of mud.

The roof here is kirizuma-zukuri, gabled, and tsuma-iri, meaning the entrance is on the gable end rather than the long side. That orientation suits a narrow site along a passage. The Agency's description specifies an okiyane roof, a separate roof structure set over the earthen box rather than resting directly on it. The gap between the two lets air move, keeps rain off the clay and allows the roof to be repaired without disturbing the walls beneath. It is a solution particular to storehouses, and one that repays a close look at the eaves line, where the roof visibly sits above rather than on the mass of the walls.

The lower part of the exterior wall is protected with sasarako shitami itabari: horizontal weatherboards held by vertical battens notched to fit over each board's edge. Plaster alone would erode where snow piles against the base, so the boarding takes the abuse. Everything above it, including the window surrounds, is finished in lime plaster, and the Agency's record singles out the care taken over those surrounds. A short eave shelters the doorway on the north face.

One point in the official record is inconsistent. The structural summary lists the roof covering as sheet iron, while the descriptive text in the same entry describes an okiyane roof laid with tiles. Both statements appear on the Agency's page for this building. A tiled okiyane later re-covered in sheet iron would explain it, but no published source resolves the question, and visitors should treat the roofing material as unconfirmed.

Why a Storehouse Was Worth Registering

Japan's registration system, created in 1996, protects buildings roughly fifty years old or more that merit care without the strict controls attached to Important Cultural Property status. Owners notify the government before altering a substantial part of the exterior and receive tax relief and technical advice in return. The system exists precisely so that modest buildings can be kept in use.

Yamashiroya Nigura was registered under the criterion for structures contributing to the historic character of the national landscape, as registration number 06-0127, in the seventy-first round of listings. The inn's guest wing of 1918, Yamashiroya Kyūkan, was registered the same day as 06-0126. Registering both makes a point about how such a property worked: the front building sold the view of the Zao mountains, and the back building held everything that made the front building possible.

The proportions are worth noting for what they say about scale. At 9.4 by 4.7 metres, the storehouse is a two-to-one rectangle, small enough that a single cart could be unloaded at the north door without blocking the passage. Nothing here was built for display.

Visiting Yumachi

Kaminoyama-Onsen Station sits on the Yamagata Shinkansen, about two and a half hours from Tokyo and twelve minutes by local train from Yamagata. Yumachi is roughly 900 metres away, twelve to fifteen minutes on foot. The walk passes Kaminoyama Castle, rebuilt in 1982 and now a local history museum, and the Shimo-Oyu public bathhouse, said to have been opened to ordinary townspeople in 1625 by the first lord of the Kaminoyama domain and still charging a fee of a few coins.

The storehouse stands on private land beside the Yamashiroya compound's east passage and is not a visitor attraction with opening hours. Yamagata Prefecture's cultural property database lists the Yamashiroya property as open to the public, but in practice access depends on what the owner, Hayamakan Co., Ltd., is running on the site at the time. The company bought the former inn in September 2010 and has used the buildings for a summer shaved-ice shop, a restaurant that opened in April 2015, a monthly market and rentals for classes and photography. Anyone travelling specifically to see the storehouse should call 023-672-0885 in advance.

The exterior can be appreciated from the lane without entering the property. Photography of the interior has no published rule, so ask first. The best light on the white plaster falls in the late afternoon, when the passage is in shadow and the upper walls still catch the sun.

Kaminoyama holds other registered storehouses. Two of them stand in the Yarai district, about twenty minutes' walk east, on the grounds of the former Hasegawa residence now run as the Kansendo museum, and both were entered on the register the same day as the Yamashiroya buildings. At 101 square metres the east storehouse there is roughly twice the size of this one. Comparing a wealthy merchant family's storehouses with an innkeeper's shows how far the same construction method could be stretched.