Former Fukumoto Family Residence Storehouse

What Is the Former Fukumoto Family Residence Storehouse?

The Former Fukumoto Family Residence Storehouse (旧福元家住宅土蔵, Kyū Fukumoto-ke Jūtaku Dozō) is a two-story fireproof storehouse for household goods, built in 1926 in Nishiyashiro, Suo-Oshima Town, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on February 17, 2022.

It belongs to the estate of Fukumoto Chōemon, a trader who came home from the United States, and it is joined directly to the north side of the main house. The footprint is small, just 23 m². The walls are of earthen Dozo-zukuri construction and the hip-and-gable roof (Irimoya-zukuri) is laid with pantiles. Like the main house, it was renovated in 1998.

A Storehouse Wired into the House

Many Japanese kura stand apart from the house, reached across a yard. The Former Fukumoto Family Residence Storehouse does not. It has three doorways: one opening toward the stone steps on the north edge of the lot, and two more opening straight into the main house, one on the ground floor and one upstairs.

Yamaguchi Prefecture notes that there is no staircase inside. You entered the lower room from the ground floor of the house and the upper room from the second floor, so all climbing happened indoors in the main house. From this the prefecture concludes that the storehouse and house were used as a single unit.

The national description credits the three entrances with making the building more convenient to use, an unusual level of attention for a storeroom this size.

Registration and the North Face

The Former Fukumoto Family Residence Storehouse was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, and the part that does the contributing is the north face, which looks out over the village.

Instead of the blank, windowless wall a storehouse usually shows the world, this side has a row of windows, and its eaves are pushed outward on molded brackets (Mochiokuri) in the projecting-beam manner known as degeta. It is a storeroom that knew it would be looked at, and from the settlement below it acts as the public face of the estate.

The finish is careful too. The eaves are sealed in Shikkui lime plaster and the walls are clad in vertical boards, the usual way of shielding earthen walls from rain and wind. Plastered eaves over board walls sit comfortably beside the Japanese exterior of the main house.

Visiting the Storehouse

The best view of the Former Fukumoto Family Residence Storehouse is from outside, along the north edge of the lot. Go round to the stone steps and the doorway, the line of windows and the brackets under the eaves are close at hand. The national database photographs the east wall and the junction with the entrance and the single-story section, and the east side is where the link to the main house is easiest to read.

The museum's visitor information does not say whether the interior of the storehouse is open to the public, so ask at the reception desk if you would like to see it. Photography is not allowed inside the museum.