Akita · Yokote MasudaNo.570★★Open in map →
Masuda Uchigura Storehouses
— Snow-country merchant town in Yokote
A merchant quarter in southern Akita where the storehouses stand inside the houses rather than behind them. To see one you walk straight through a shop and down a corridor, and the kura is waiting at the end.
- FromAkita Station
- ~95 minJR then local bus, ~95 min
- Get off atMasuda Kura-no-Eki bus stop (Ugo Kotsu)
- On foot
- Masuda Uchigura Storehouses
The sweet spot
Masuda is a nationally designated preservation district, so it is documented rather than secret. It stays quiet because there is nothing to photograph from the road: the thing worth seeing sits behind a shop counter, at the end of a passage, and you have to walk in to find it.
Where it is
34 more notes in Akita · open the map →What to look for
- Nakananokamachi Streetthe single street the district is strung along, shop fronts standing in a row
- Kura-no-Eki visitor centrea former hardware merchant's house, and one of the few where the upper floor of the kura is open
- The Tanifuji house kuraa city-designated inner storehouse, plaster walls and heavy doors intact
- The Sato Maroku housea merchant house whose shop-front storehouse is still in daily use
- The former Ishida Rikichi housea three-storey timber house, a rare form in this part of the country
How to actually get there
- Akita Station → Jumonji Station (JR Ou Main Line, about 85 minutes).
- Jumonji Station → Masuda Kura-no-Eki (Ugo Kotsu bus for Inaniwa, Nyudo or Kusanodai, about 10 minutes).
- Masuda Kura-no-Eki → the visitor centre, then the houses open that day along Nakananokamachi Street.
- Masuda Kura-no-Eki → Jumonji Station (same bus route back).
- JR to Jumonji, then the Ugo Kotsu bus
- Akita Station →(JR Ou Main Line, about 85 minutes)→ Jumonji Station. From the station forecourt take an Ugo Kotsu bus bound for Inaniwa, Nyudo or Kusanodai and ride about 10 minutes to the Masuda Kura-no-Eki stop. A taxi covers the same leg in about the same time.
- Back from Masuda to Jumonji Station
- The same Ugo Kotsu route runs back to Jumonji, but it is a local service built for residents rather than visitors and it thins out through the afternoon. Read the return times off the pole at the stop before you start walking, and keep a taxi number in reserve.
About the place
The preservation district covers 10.6 hectares of a country market town in southern Yokote, strung along a single street. Snow is the reason for its shape. Where drifts sit for months, a storehouse in the open yard is hard to reach and hard to keep dry, so the merchants here built the kura first, wrapped a timber shell called a saya around it, and joined the whole thing to the back of the main house. From the pavement you see shop fronts and nothing else. Nineteen of these houses now open the passage and let visitors walk back to the storehouse at the end of it.
How to enjoy it
Start at the Kura-no-Eki centre by the bus stop and ask which houses are open that day; each is entered on its own and the list moves. Winter is the season the town was built for. Snow lies deep here from December into March, the walk between doorways is short by design, and the kura make more sense with the drifts outside.
Background & history
Masuda grew as a country market town at the meeting of two highways, and its money came from silk thread, leaf tobacco and sake brewing. The storehouses that survive were all built before the Second World War, most of them under Meiji and Taisho, when a kura fitted out as a formal reception room became the mark of a prosperous house. The Agency for Cultural Affairs selected the district on 27 December 2013 — Akita's second, after the samurai lanes of Kakunodate.
Before you go
- Cash
- The street costs nothing to walk. Carry cash for the bus, which is settled on board, and for whichever houses you decide to enter.
- Before you go
- Southern Akita is deep-snow country, and from December into March the walking is slower than the map suggests. The houses each set their own opening days, so check at the Kura-no-Eki centre on arrival rather than fixing an order in advance.
- Another way
- From Yokote the JR Ou Main Line runs a short way south to Jumonji, and the same bus continues from there. Drivers leave the Yuzawa–Yokote road at the Jumonji interchange and follow Route 342 towards Masuda.
- After you get off
- The Masuda Kura-no-Eki stop sits on Nakananokamachi Street itself. The visitor centre of the same name is under a minute away on foot, and the open houses line the street from there.