Shikairo

A Four-Storey Pseudo-Western House of 1879

The Shikairo (四階楼) is a four-storey timber building in the pseudo-Western style of 1879 in Murotsu, Kaminoseki Town, Kumage District, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and was designated an Important Cultural Property on December 27, 2005 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a four-storey timber building with a pantiled roof and a building area of 58.67 square metres; a ritual wand of June 1879 is designated alongside it; designation number 02478.

A Guest House for a Shipping Agent

The Shikairo was built in 1879 at Murotsu, on the tip of the Murotsu Peninsula reaching into the Inland Sea, a known port of call for the Kitamaebune trading ships, by a local shipping agent as a house to receive or lodge guests (Agency for Cultural Affairs). A ritual wand found in the roof space of the top floor recorded the date, the client and the builder.

It is a four-storey timber building with a pantiled hipped roof, its walls fully plastered, with cornices and corner-stone patterns modelled in plaster. Plaster reliefs of rising dragons wrap the corner posts of the top floor, peonies decorate the first-floor eaves and a phoenix fills the centre of the top-floor ceiling, while the top-floor windows hold red, blue, yellow and green glass (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

According to the Agency, it later served as an inn and other uses, came into the ownership of Kaminoseki Town in 1991, and after conservation has been opened to the public.

Why It Is an Important Cultural Property

The Agency describes how its four storeys within an eave height of 9.7 metres, its spiral stair and its fanciful plaster reliefs show the character of pseudo-Western architecture, and designates it as an important example of the few plastered pseudo-Western buildings left in western Japan.

What to Look For

Look for the plaster dragons on the top-floor corner posts and the four colours of glass in the top-floor windows (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Visiting

It is owned by Kaminoseki Town (Agency for Cultural Affairs). According to the Agency, it is open to the public as part of the town's local history facility next door. No current official information on opening hours was found.