The centuries-old DNA of the Japanese house provides a great deal of planning wisdom in this regard. The principal rooms of a premodern Japanese wooden house have soft tatami floors and are minimally furnished with practical items and temporary decorations to express the season. Unobtrusive closets known as oshiire are located throughout the house, and all furniture, including bedding, is put away when not in use so as to free up the room for other purposes. Hidden storage spaces embedded in walls, ceilings, and under floors help preserve the illusion of a life unencumbered by attachment to material possessions while ensuring that inhabitants have everything they need in an emergency and that guests lack nothing in the way of hospitality. In accommodating the mountains of belongings a family might amass over generations, however, no closet or crawl space inside the house can compare in sheer effectiveness with the mighty Japanese kura. The term "kura" describes a broad category of freestanding storehouses belonging to a family, a farm, a business or collective enterprise, a temple, or a shrine. Kura are not habitable structures; their singular purpose is the long-term storage and protection of material goods from thieves, pests, fires, and other disasters. Though they serve a function nearly identical to today's self-storage unit, kura are distinguished by their high architectural quality and presence within a family compound or property. Kura come in many different sizes and construction types-earthen, stacked-log, timber-frame, and masonry structures are the most common-yet they are instantly recognizable as belonging to a unified building type. Monumental, symmetrical massing and expressively textured facades compensate for a relative lack of windows. These features give kura a fortress-like appearance, the very opposite of the lightweight, open-to-nature qualities we've come to associate with Japan's native architecture. Kura are ubiquitous within Japan's cities and countryside, serving an essential placemaking role in the historic fabric and at tourist sites. Yet for all the attention focused on Japanese architecture in modern times, this building type-and its role in supporting Japanese minimalist aesthetics-remains relatively unknown to the outside world. The kura stays hidden, as it were, in plain view.
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