Otaru City Museum Director Naoaki Ishikawa Updated 2020.12.19

A stone warehouse with a prominent shachihoko (lion-shaped carp) standing along the canal, the Former Otaru Warehouse is a representative structure among the many historical buildings in Otaru. It may seem a bit odd to begin the story of this warehouse, built by a Kitamae shipowner and supporting the leading economic city in northern Japan, in Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku.

Among the old documents of the Yamanishi family, who ran a large fertilizer business in the middle reaches of the Yoshino River in Tokushima during the Edo period, a letter addressed to Kitamae ship owners reporting on the sales status of consignment sales of herring meal has been found.(*) At that time, indigo cultivation was at its peak in Tokushima, and herring meal was said to be an essential commodity for cultivation.

The Kitamae-bune ships that were responsible for selling and transporting these products were cargo ships that made their business viable by taking advantage of price differences in distant areas. Therefore, they needed to collect detailed information on demand, production status, and so on in each region. They also needed to build a network of contacts to obtain this information. Merchants from Tokushima were incorporated into this network.

The letter was addressed to 12 Kitamae ship owners and boatmen, with the last address written as "Shohachi Nishitani." Nishitani, who had made his fortune from herring meal, entered a new field in the 1880s together with his fellow townsman, Nishide Magozaemon, from Kaga Hashidate (present-day Kaga City): the warehousing business in Hokkaido.

Photo: The area around the Otaru Warehouse in the late Meiji period

The rise and fall of the Kitamae-bune trade will be discussed in a separate article, but from the early Meiji period onwards, many Kitamae-bune ships arrived at Otaru Port, and many of the shipowners were from the Hokuriku region. Seeing the stagnation of Kitamae-bune trade and the future potential of Otaru Port, which had become a base for the development of Hokkaido, many shipowners decided to turn their business into warehousing.

In 1890, Nishitani and Nishide, two men from Kaga Hashidate, built a timber-framed stone warehouse in the south shore of Otaru Port, where land reclamation had just been completed. This building is currently used as the first exhibition room of the Otaru General Museum Canal Hall.

Later, due to circumstances at the Nishide family home, the warehouse was taken over by Yamamoto Kyuemon (the second generation), who was also a Kitamaebune ship merchant seeking a base in Otaru. Around this time, the Otaru warehouse was expanded and remodeled into its current "R" shape, becoming a large warehouse of 3,000 square meters. The shachihoko (roof ornament) on the roof was likely installed during this period.

Photo: The current Shachihoko at the former Otaru Warehouse

The Yamamoto family traded miso paste and other products in areas ranging from Tanabe in Mutsu Province to Matsumae and Esashi, but the second-generation head of the family, Kyuemon, read the trends of the Meiji era and became one of Hokkaido's leading fishermen. At the same time, he purchased several sailing ships (known as Kitamae-bune), and became known as the "shipping king," selling herring meal and other products he produced in his fishing grounds throughout Honshu. He always had an eye for the times, later replacing his Japanese-style boats with Western-style sailing ships.

Then, the third-generation Kyuemon, who was adopted from Niigata Prefecture, began to fully enter the warehousing business. The modern warehousing industry is said to have begun with the Tokyo Warehouse (later Mitsubishi Warehouse), founded in 1887. The third-generation Kyuemon founded Otaru Warehouse Co., Ltd. in 1893. He launched a warehousing business as a company, a modern form of logistics, and began as the first commercial warehouse in Hokkaido.

Photo: Interior of Otaru Warehouse at the time of its opening (1893) (Otaru City Museum Collection)

Furthermore, the third generation Kyuemon moved his base from Fukuyama to Otaru in 1904. He focused his business on shipping and warehousing in Otaru, a newly emerging city that was attracting attention from all over the country, and became known as a typical "Otaru merchant."

A book titled "Otaru" compiled in 1914 states, "Among the rumors of company-organized warehouses in Hokkaido, if you were to ask which one dominates the warehousing industry in this port in terms of the credibility of lessors and the safety of cargo, the first name that would come to mind would be Otaru Warehouse Co., Ltd."

Many banks would later move into Otaru, but at the time the Otaru Warehouse was built, there were only four banks. Commercial warehouses were not simply storage facilities for goods. They also played an important role in financial services, issuing bonds against the goods stored in the warehouse and trading them. Among them, the Otaru Warehouse, which occupied a long and wide stretch of prime coastal land, had an outstanding presence.

Photo: Current wall of the former Otaru Warehouse facing the canal

The Otaru Warehouse is not only characterized by its long horizontal structure facing the coast, but also by the existence of a courtyard surrounded by warehouses, which was also related to the function of the warehouse at the time.

The market price of a product changes depending on the scale of distribution. Therefore, by knowing how much product is stored in the warehouse, it is possible to predict future prices. It is said that in order to block such information, the handling area was set up in a courtyard out of sight. Furthermore, the first floor of the office building was made into a passageway so that the entrance for horse-drawn carts could be blocked. The current UNGAPLUS store area is located on the site of the original horse-drawn cart passageway when the company was founded.

Otaru Warehouse adopted Atsuzo, a native of Nagano Prefecture. A graduate of Tokyo Higher Commercial School (the precursor to Hitotsubashi University), Atsuzo led the warehousing industry in Otaru with his modern management techniques, becoming the driving force behind the city's development into one of Japan's leading economic cities.

The unique construction techniques, using Sapporo soft stone (tuff) and Sakhalin fir, are also a prime example of Otaru architecture. When you visit UNGAPLUS, the LeTAO Canal Plaza store, or the Otaru Canal Museum, be sure to take a look at the ceilings and walls. You may find traces of the various goods that were transported from all over Hokkaido to Honshu, and vice versa.

Photo: Ceiling beams inside the south warehouse

*Morimoto Ikuko, 2004, "The Structure of the Regional Market in Awa Province at the End of the Edo Period: Focusing on an Analysis of the Formation of the Fuya Sansei Family" (Historia, No. 188, Osaka Historical Society), p. 104, etc.

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