Kura: Japanese Traditional Warehouses in Shizuoka Prefecture 3-Galvo Gallery in Shizuoka City!

“Kura” (in japanese 蔵 or 倉) means “warehouse” or “Storehouse”.
In traditonal Japan, especially during the Edo Era, as most of buildings and urba/village structures were made of wood, fires were the bane of society by and large.
However well-protected a fire would consume a house or buildings and all its properties within minutes.
Hence a special building or warehouse was needed to protect goods and properties against such a catastrophe.
But erecting a storehouse solely made of concrete, stones and some metal cost a vast amount of silver and gold and only rich merchants and nobility could afford them. Even castles could not be built entirely of stone then.

I have been chasing “kura” in Shizuoka for some time but I had never realized that the most beautiful of them stood along my daily cycle trips in Shizuoka City!
There is a simple reason for that: I was always cycling past the front facade without bothering looking up!
And then yesterday as I was cycling around in search of a totally unrelated spot I espied the back of a grand kura across a large car park. Mind you, the car park is fairly new and lays in a spot formerly occupied by old buildings!

So I got off my bicycle, leaving my bag in its basket (Japan is so safe, but I realized later that was border limit!), and practically ran across the car park (not really allowed, LOL!) to have a closer look.
How could I have missed such a big kura (enormous by Shizuoka standards) and the more for it being built of ancient red bricks? The roof had been restored and the fact that red does not really stand out in the city might have been other reasons!

It is now owned by Galvo Gallery, a high end ladies fashion shop.
The great clothes in the display window tend to keep your eyes away for a more deliberate view of the building itself!