Former Ito Limited Partnership Company New Room

A reception wing at the end of a covered walkway

The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company New Room (旧伊東合資会社新座敷, Kyū Itō Gōshi Gaisha Shinzashiki) is a middle Meiji era detached reception wing in Kamezaki, Handa City, Aichi Prefecture, registered as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property (building) on 31 October 2022. It stands west of the main house of the Ito family, brewers of the sake brand Shikishima, and is joined to it by a covered walkway.

The building is a single-storey timber structure with a hipped Yosemune-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles. Its floor area is 79 square metres, modest beside the 291 square metres of the main house. Construction is dated to roughly 1883 to 1897.

Being detached is the whole point of the building. Everyday life happened in the main house; this wing existed to receive guests. Crossing the walkway was itself the transition from the domestic side of the property to the formal one.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that the Former Ito Limited Partnership Company New Room was prepared as a resting place for the Meiji Emperor. The database gives no dates for a visit or details of any stay, and this article does not go beyond what that description states. The fact that a provincial brewing family fitted out rooms in anticipation of an imperial progress says a good deal about the standing the Ito household then held.

Restraint as the reason for registration

The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company New Room was registered under the criterion for buildings that serve as a model of design, the same criterion applied to the main house. Its registration number is 23-0581. The Council for Cultural Affairs made its recommendation at the 240th subcommittee meeting on 22 July 2022, and the registration was gazetted on 31 October that year.

The Agency describes the wing as refined architecture in the Sukiya-zukuri manner that avoids ostentation. Sukiya design carried the discipline of the tea room into domestic building: rank is expressed through slender members and the choice of materials rather than through heavy timbers or carving. Applying that restraint to rooms intended for the highest possible guest is what the assessors singled out.

The detailing repays attention. A flat copper-sheet eave runs around all four sides beneath the tiled main roof, so the profile steps twice on its way down. Copper weathers to a green patina, which means the building was designed to change colour slowly over its life rather than to look finished on the day it was completed.

Three rooms in a row

Inside the Former Ito Limited Partnership Company New Room, three rooms run in a single line on a north to south axis. An antechamber of four mats comes first, then a second room of eight mats, then the principal room of eight mats. Rank rises as a visitor moves deeper in. Guests composed themselves in the antechamber, waited in the middle room, and met the head of the household in the last. Passing through rooms rather than along a corridor turns distance into ceremony.

The sizes carry the same message. Four mats, eight, eight: only the first room is halved. It was designed to be walked through, not occupied.

The wing runs north to south, at right angles to the main house, which runs east to west. Seen across the whole property, the reception wing turns a corner behind the long street frontage and pushes back into the site. A garden separates the two, and because the buildings face different ways, the depth of the grounds registers on anyone standing between them.

Visiting

The Former Ito Limited Partnership Company New Room belongs to Sugita Co., Ltd. As of August 2026 neither the owner nor Handa City publishes any schedule of openings. The wing sits deep in the grounds behind the main house, so even the exterior is hard to see from the public road. Anyone hoping to view it should watch for announcements of a special opening.

The same applies to photography. There is effectively no vantage point outside the property from which the wing itself can be photographed. Please do not enter private land. The character of the whole compound is better read from the street elevation of the main house and from the storehouse wall along the canal.

The nearest station is Kamezaki on the JR Taketoyo Line, about 15 minutes on foot or 3 minutes by taxi. From Nagoya Station, change at Ōbu onto the Taketoyo Line, or take a semi-rapid service bound for Taketoyo and stay aboard. By car it is about 15 minutes from the Agui interchange on the Chita Peninsula Road.

Kamezaki is a port town of slopes and narrow lanes, and the walk up from the station passes through a good deal of surviving old streetscape. The shop in the converted former brewery opens Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00 (checked August 2026), which makes a workable base for exploring on foot.