Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence

A Taisho Parlor at the Back of the Courtyard

The Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence (旧磯部家住宅裏座敷, Kyū Isobe-ke Jūtaku Urazashiki) is a Taishō-period reception building in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 9 February 2005. It is a small single-story timber structure with a tiled roof and a building area of 38 square meters.

It stands behind the main house that fronts the street, on the far side of an inner courtyard, joined to the main house by a covered passage on the north. Nothing of it is visible from Honmachi Street. You reach the courtyard first, and the building appears all at once.

The arrangement was deliberate. For the Isobe family, who sold kimono fabric here under the shop name Kashiwaya, the street front was for trade and the rooms behind it were for living. The Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence sits one step further back still, across a garden, holding the space where guests were received apart from the daily traffic of the household.

It was built during the Taishō period, some time between 1912 and 1925. Since the main house dates from the Keiō era in the 1860s, this parlor is an addition of roughly half a century later.

Why It Was Registered

The criterion applied reads "contributes to the historic landscape of the nation." The register number is 23-0169, from the forty-fifth round. The parlor was listed on the same day as the main house, the storehouse, the inner storehouse and the storage shed, so the compound entered the register as a whole.

The roof is Irimoya-zukuri, hipped above and gabled below, and covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles. That is a formal roof, the sort a household would choose for a room meant to impress. The frame beneath it says something else. Posts, girders and exposed rafters are all plain squared timber with no carved or decorative members, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs database describes the effect as unadorned.

A formal roof over a plain frame is the character of the Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence. What a merchant family wanted from a guest room, and what it did not want, is legible in the choice.

What to Look For

Inside there are two rooms. The principal one measures eight mats and carries an alcove and shelving; a smaller room of five and a half mats adjoins it on the west. A veranda turns a right angle around the south and east sides, opening onto the courtyard.

From outside, the thing to watch is the eaves line. The Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence keeps its eaves low and the roof pitch shallow, and the rafters are left visible as a finished surface. The result reads as horizontal rather than tall. Stand in the courtyard and look up at the eaves; the national database calls the exterior refined, and from that angle the word makes sense.

The connecting passage deserves a moment too. It is a short roofed walk crossing the courtyard from the north side of the main house. On a wet day, this is how guests would have been brought through.

Seen past the planting in the courtyard, the low roof of the parlor overlaps the white plastered wall of the storehouse behind it. The Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence was never meant to be read alone. It is one scene in the depth of the property.

Visiting

The parlor is open year round as part of the Former Isobe Residence Restored Facility, and admission is free. Hours are 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:30. The site closes from 29 to 31 December, and may close at short notice when a weather warning is issued.

Personal photography is permitted. Commercial shoots, filming with equipment, and photography in special costume require a written proposal filed in advance with the Historic Town Development Division at Inuyama City Hall. Group visits and school trips need a prior consultation arranged by telephone.

From the west exit of Meitetsu Inuyama Station the walk takes about ten minutes. Limited express trains from Meitetsu Nagoya reach Inuyama in roughly 25 minutes. The Wanmaru-kun community bus stops at Ekimae-dori, two minutes away on foot. There is no parking at the site, so use public transport or one of the paid lots nearby.

Several spaces in the compound are rented out for exhibitions, and an exhibition can alter the route visitors take. If the Back Room of the Former Isobe Family Residence is what brings you, telephone 0568-65-3444 beforehand to check the day's arrangements.