The Kura 蔵

Kura (倉 or 蔵) are a type of storehouses. Unlike naya (納屋 outer structures) and koya (小屋 sheds), kura were built to store food and, more generally, all sorts of precious items. 

In terms of architecture they would differ depending on the owner’s wealth as well as what they intended to store: businesses and merchant primarily needed them for their goods, castles would use them for food and clothes, families for household objects and heirlooms. Japanese houses were very susceptible to burn down and the lack of space dedicated to objects in traditional houses made it difficult to keep them inside the main house. Attics were sometimes used for storage, but it would not have been for anything irreplaceable. Expensive housewares that would be solely used for special occasions were thus stored in kura.

Wooden kura were found in most villages (you see them in places such as Shirakawago where food and snow equipment needed to be stored). Ancient ones made of logs (azekura 校倉) built alongside temples to preserve sacred treasures still stand today. A rare category of kura made of stone (ishigura 石倉) was used to mainly store gunpowder. 

From the Tokugawa period, earthen kura (dozō 土蔵) made using a thick layer of tsuchikabe (mud daub) became most popular due to their resistance to fire. They would not only protect what was inside but also served as fire-retardant structures (fires, especially in Edo, could destroy entire districts in minutes). These kura were also ideal as they kept the temperature relatively stable. However, they were expensive to build. Many rich merchants, who were at the bottom of the cast system and were prohibited from showing their wealth, had three-story high dozō built as a status symbol. Almost all of the kura we still see standing today are dozō.

The kura’s heavy doors and iron-barred small windows were also a great protection against theft. For a long time, having your own kura denoted a certain status as one would need to have enough possessions to justify building one. 

Besides their amazingly diversified interiors and architectural beauty, it is mostly thanks to them that so much of the past was preserved. After WWII, as the Japanese economy recovered, many Japanese families opened their kura to sell the content as it was seen as unfashionable relics from the past. This phenomenon sadly happened in a lot of places, I remember my grandmother telling me of her grandparents replacing handmade wooden tables with formica. 

Reference: https://doi.org/10.2307/989128

More on this: Lost Japan by Alex Kerr (ISBN: 9780141979755)

In relation to storage, I found a rather interesting book (Taihō Code (大宝律令) from the Ritsuyo system period (8th century reforms) which I'll explain in a future post.