Gunsan Gaejeong-myeon Former Japanese Farm Warehouse (Shimatani Vault)

About this place

The Shimatani Vault is a safe-room building erected in the 1920s by Shimatani Yasoya, one of Gunsan's most representative Japanese farm owners during the colonial period. Shimatani was keenly interested in collecting Korean cultural artifacts and illegally amassed numerous artworks including the Balsan-ri Stone Lantern and Five-Story Stone Pagoda. This building served as a storage place for the antiques he collected. The structure is a three-story concrete building with a steel vault door at the entrance and double-locked windows secured by iron bars and iron plates. After establishing his farm where Balsan Elementary School now stands, Shimatani Yasoya — originally from Kuka-gun, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, who had accumulated wealth through the brewing industry in Japan — arrived in Gunsan seeking cheap rice and in December 1903 purchased land in Balsan-ri for 70,000 won, eventually owning 486 cho of farmland across three townships by 1909. Even after liberation, he applied to the U.S. Military Government to naturalize as Korean to keep his farm, and was the last Japanese farm owner in Gunsan; ultimately he boarded the final repatriation ship at Busan Port carrying only two bags, forced out by the U.S. Military Government. The building is a monolithic structure with a semi-basement first floor connected through to the third floor, with wooden floors separating each story. The windows have iron bars and external iron doors for double security, and the entrance door bears a clear USA mark, indicating it was an American import from before World War II.