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Storehouse, warehouse (kura)
***** Location: Japan
***** Season: Non-seasonal Topic
***** Category: Humanity
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Explanation
Fire was a gread hazard in olden times and the strongly build "kura" were one way to protect one's property.
storehouse, tiled storehous, kura 蔵
dozoo 土蔵
storehouse for ricewine, sakegura 酒蔵
living room in a storehouse, for emergency situations, kura zashiki 蔵座敷
storehouse for rice, komegura 米蔵
Most farm estates in my area in Okayama have a kura, a special storehouse for the family treasures.
It is used to protect things from earthquakes, fires and hurricanes.
The strong walls are fireproof and the windows are very small with fireproof shutters. The strong doors are fireproof too. The timber used for a kura was covered with clay and then with a plaster finish.
Typical walls with tiles of a Tosa storehouse, Shikoku
The roof consists of heavy tiles to withstand storm and fire. Sometimes even the walls have a row or two of tiles to make a way for strong rain blown on the walls during a typhoon. This kind of wall is especially common along the seaside towns of Japan.
The doors had special locks to prevent thieves and burglers from their work.
Locks of the Edo Period / joomae 錠前
joo, kusari 鎖 is a chain that can be used with a lock.
- - - - - Matsuo Basho - - - - -
朝顔や昼は鎖おろす門の垣
. asagao ya hiru wa joo orosu mon no kaki .
鎖あけて月さし入れよ浮み堂
joo akete tsuki sashireyo Ukimi Doo
let us open the lock
and have the moon shine in -
Floating Hall
Tr. Gabi Greve
Visiting the 浮御堂 Ukimido Floating Hall - the details:
. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .
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The walls were often strengthened with plaster, in various geometrical patterns. These "namako kabe なまこ壁" are especially beautiful in their contrast of white and black.
The black parts of this wall are made from flat black tiles, hira gawara ( 平瓦（ひらがわら）. The roofs of a storehouse were rather small in their overhang, to prevent a fire from being pressed down on the walls, and the tiles on the bottom of a wall were fireproof and also protected from the rain.
The beautiful black finish of these walls is very typical of some regions, where they get many extra layers of a special laquer 黒漆喰.
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Strong Doors of a Storehouse
Samurai Residence, buke yashiki 武家屋敷
Katsuyama, Japan
The door was built in some steps, each covered with mortar made of mud, so the fire sparks would not come in. This is called "kakego painting, kakegonuri 掛子（かけご）塗り.
Look at my collection of window shutters at a storehouse in Katsuyama !
More "plaster paintings" as decorations for storehouses, kote-e 鏝絵 （こてえ）. Click on the photo.
These relief works of art are made by the plasterers, usually with a pattern of good luck for the family. One of the famous masters of this kind of artwork was Irie Chohachi 入江長八
(Iri-e Choohachi) of the town of Matsuzaka (Shizuoka prefecture), where you can see a whole museum full of his artwork.
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Kurashiki, a town with many storehouses
倉敷 Okayama Prefecture Japan
Kurashiki and Daruma san
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Kawagoe and its storehouses
Kawagoe's fortunes owe everything to its strategic position on the Shingashi River and Kawagoe-kaido, the ancient highway to the capital. If you wanted to get goods to Tokyo, then called Edo, they more than likely had to go via Kawagoe, thus the town's merchants prospered as a result. They accumulated the cash to build fireproof kurazukuri, the black, two-storey shophouses the town is now famous for.
At one time there were over 200 of these houses, but their earthenware walls didn't prove quite so effective against fire as hoped (nor were they much use in the face of Japan's headlong rush to modernization). Even so, some thirty still remain, with sixteen prime examples clustered together along Chuo-dori, around 1 km north of the JR and Tobu stations, protected as Important Cultural Properties.
© travel.yahoo.com
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source : popeye.sakura.ne.jp/tochigi...
kura dorei 蔵土鈴 clay bell of a warehouse
Tochigi is famous for its kura, 「蔵の街とちぎ」
. . . CLICK here for Photos - Kura from Tochigi -
. Tochigi Folk Art - 栃木県 .
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. Kuramae 蔵前 / 倉前 Kuramae district .
Edo, Asakusa, Taito ward
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External LINK
NHK: 蔵。美の壺
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Worldwide use
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Things found on the way
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HAIKU
kigo for the New Year
kurabiraki 蔵開 (くらびらき)
first opening of the store house
..... okurabiraki 御蔵開（おくらびらき)
. NEW YEAR : Work begins
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- At the party of a certain person
香を探る梅に蔵見る軒端哉
ka o saguru ume ni kura miru nokiba kana
searching for the plum fragrance
I gaze up to the eaves
of this warehouse . . .
Tr. Gabi Greve
This is a greeting for his host, Boosen 防川 Bosen, a rich merchant with a large warehouse.
The cut marker KANA is at the end of line 3.
Oi no Kobumi 笈の小文
. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .
Boosen 防川 Bosen
Not much is known about this merchant. Two of his poems are in the Arano Collection あら野.
大服は去年の青葉の匂哉
一本の葦の穂痩しゐせき哉
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蔵焼けて 障るものなき 月見哉
kura yakete sawaru mono naki tsukimi kana
My storehouse burnt down,
There is nothing to obstruct
The moon-view.
trans. Blyth
Now that my storehouse
has burned down, nothing
conceals the moon.
trans. Yoel Hoffmann
Mizuta Masahide 水田 正秀 (1657-1723)
Read the discussion of the translation here.
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Kobayashi Issa
よその蔵からすじかひに初日哉
yoso no kura kara sujikai ni hatsu hi kana
from a neighbor's storehouse
shining slantwise...
year's first sun
おち葉してけろりと立し土蔵哉
ochiba shite kerori to tateshi dozô kana
among fallen leaves
the storehouse
unconcerned
下戸の立たる蔵もなし年の暮
geko no tatetaru kura mo nashi toshi no kure
no storehouse was ever
built by a non-drinker...
the year ends
More KURA haiku by Issa
Tr. David Lanoue
The last haiku refers to a proverb
下戸(げこ)の建てたる倉も無し
geko no tateru kura mo nashi
Even if you do not drink sake, there is no promise you will get rich.
So it is better to drink a little and enjoy your life.
from Kuwagata Keisai 鍬形蕙斎『諺画苑』
This shows just the opposite, a drinker in his storehouse, enjoying his cup of sake.
Comment by Robin Gill on facebook:
In an early 17c book, the title of which H Mack Horton translates as Laughs to Banish Sleep, Anraku Sakuden plays with the old proverb in a poem which continues that "and a heavy drinker's storehouse has a hard time standing up."
Ah, the original, literally translated is that "there are no storehouses raised by teetotalers" (i suppose that merchants need the social lubrication to sell goods and amass treasure to be stored.
A verbal war between drinkers and non-drinkers in Japan goes back to the Manyoushu where we can tell the poems in favor of drink are responding to would-be prohibitionists or, at least moralists. The most interesting debates in poetry took place in mad poems and you may find a dozen or so on both sides (where the non-drinking physician Bokuyo defends teetotalers by attacks drinkers after a drinker put down teetotalers) in Mad In Translation.
Mad poetry is probably the biggest storehouse of drinking poems. My favorite of Issa's drinking poems does not concern practical matters. It is the one where he takes a swig of sake for each stroke of his hoe or the vice-versa (my memory is of the approximate type) -- a playful take-off on the Chinese poet said to write so many poems per cup of wine . . .
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秋ざくら倉庫とともに運河古る
akizakura sooko to tomo ni unga furu
cosmos flowers -
old storehouses along with
an old canal
Akatsuka Gogyoo 赤塚五行
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my neighbour's kura ...
he closed the door
with a loud BANG
Gabi Greve, April 2006
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Related words
***** Fire (kaji) The Town of Edo is burning down ...
. 浅草御蔵 Asakusa Kuramae - Edo Tokyo .
and Wadakura 和田倉 Wadakura, Chiyoda ward
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- #kura #gura #warehouse #storehouse -
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5/16/2008
Storehouse (kura)
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11 comments:
kura yakete sawaru mono naki tsukimi kana
Is the season of this haiku automatically autumn, because of the use of 'moon' without another season qualifier?
If so, then there is a pychological depth to the ku that otherwise might not be recognized. A storehouse burning down in autumn, after the harvest, would mean hard times for the family for the coming year. But instead of lamenting the loss, or overtly expressing concern for their welfare, the poet focuses attention on what Shirane calls "the vertical axis" of the
natural world--the ever returning moon.
The horizontal axis (Shirane) is reflected in the present moment, which offsets the pain of loss with the joy of moon viewing, and the hope for future harvests in the natural order of things.
At least, this is my reading, at this point in time. If I have overlooked something that would be obvious to one steeped in Japanese culture, would you kindly let me know?
I live in Arkansas, one of the Southern states in the USA that have been repeatedly hit by killer tornadoes since February. This reading of the poem above gives me a different perspective on all the recent television images of natural disasters in Myanmar, India, and China, as well as in my own region.
Thanks for sharing it, and in the different translations.
Johnye
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/simply_haiku/message/21772
Gabi san thank you greatly for your information on Kura and Kuramae.
Those show me wide guide to rice broker whose name Natsume Seibi.
As you know he was a great sponsor as well as a teacher of Issa staying in Edo.
I think Seibi is key man to understand Issa's character.
sakuo.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/2391
かはほりの代々土蔵住居哉
kawahori no dai-dai dozoo sumai kana
generations of bats
have called this storehouse
home
Kobayashi Issa
(Tr. David Lanoue)
quote from the Japan Times -
These storehouses were usually built some distance from the main dwelling or shop to reduce the risk from fires caused by cooking or heating.
"One reason you see kura surrounded by modern buildings is that they were more likely than other traditional structures to survive fire and disaster," Kanai said. "It's very interesting to look at photographs taken immediately after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, and the firebombing in 1945. What you see is a lot of rubble with just the kura left standing." Even when people rebuilt by choice, they often took down the main house but left the kura intact.
"A kura was a status symbol," Kanai explained. "It told the world you had something valuable enough to need protecting, and that you had the money to build one."
In fact, the expression "kura o tateru" ("to build a storehouse") is another way of saying "to become a financial success."
Building an earthen storehouse was indeed an expensive undertaking. First you had to lay a stone foundation to support the wooden frame, which was usually built with massive logs. Then you would affix bamboo or palm lathing to the frame, and apply layer after layer of clay to form the interior walls. When all that was dry, you would finish the walls by meticulously applying thin layers of a plaster called shikkui. It's shikkui that gives dozō storehouses their distinctive white exterior.
.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ek20120515wh.html
joo 鎖 chain, used to lock
.
鎖あけて月さし入れよ浮み堂
鎖 ( じやう ) 明けて月さし入れよ 浮御堂
joo akete tsuki sashireyo Ukimi Doo
let us open the lock
and have the moon shine in -
Floating Hall
Matsuo Basho
Tr. Gabi Greve
.
MORE
about this hokku and the situation
香を探る梅に蔵見る軒端哉
ka o saguru / ume ni kura miru / nokiba kana
Matsuo Basho
Kobayashi Issa and his storhouse hurned down . . .
焼跡やほかりほかりと蚤さわぐ
yake ato ya hokari-hokari to nomi sawagu
yake-tsuchi no hokari-hokari ya nomi sawagu
.
with a photo
.
kura zashiki, kurazashiki 蔵座敷 living room in a storehouse
information and haiku
Legend from Sendai, Miyagi
.
wabisukegura 侘助蔵 the store house of Wabisuke
Wabisuke liked to drink sake 酒 rice wine and one day he got the large cup ot the Lord, drank it all in one gulp and tonshi 頓死 dropped dead. The Lord ordered his doctor to open the dead body and in the stomach he found a jar.
This jar was kept in the kura 蔵 storehouse of the castle, thus now named Wabisukegura.
.
https://gokurakuparadies.blogspot.com/2020/12/tonshi-drop-dead.html
.
Legend from Nagano, 三峯山 / 三ッ峰山 Mitsumineyama, Mitsumuneyama
A painting of a dog is venerated as Mitsumine san to ward off theft.
But there was one family, which had placed a painting in its kura 蔵 storehouse, and yet- a thief went in there.
The family prayed to Mitsumine San to kill the thief.
When they looked again into the storehouse, they found their son dead in there.
.
https://japanshrinestemples.blogspot.com/2019/10/mitsumine-sama-legends.html
.
Legend from Nagano
sanjuusann nen jichuu de ikita hito 三十三年地中で生きた人 2 men living 33 years under the earth
Once the farmers dug a well near the foot of 浅間ヶ嶽 Mount Asama.
At a certain depth, they did not find water but some roof tiles.
They thought this strange and dug deeper, where they found the roof and the storehouse.
Inside were two people of about 50 years.
They had lived there after a landslide 33 years earlier.
Originally there were four men trapped inside, but two had died.
They had eaten the rice and Sake ricewine from the storehouse to survive.
.
https://gokurakuparadies.blogspot.com/2021/08/sanjusangendo-legends.html
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