Former Kato Family Residence Detached Wing

A reception wing on the west side of the main house

The Former Kato Family Residence Detached Wing (旧加藤家住宅離れ, Kyū-Katō-ke Jūtaku Hanare) is a single-storey timber reception building of the early Shōwa era in Rokushi, Kitanagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, added to the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 November 1999. It covers 71 square meters and carries a Sangawara-buki roof of pantiles.

The Katō family served as village headmen of Rokushi and were known locally as Ōkatō, the "great Katō." They ran a sake brewery from the closing years of the Edo period until the middle of the Meiji era. Their walled compound of roughly 370 tsubo, about 1,200 square meters, still holds the main house, a Nagayamon gatehouse, a storehouse, an inner gate and a tall fence. The detached wing sits west of the main house, its west wall doubling as the boundary of the property.

A short roofed passage links the two buildings. The plan runs north to south: a ten-mat room at the north end, an eight-mat room at the south, and beyond that a Chashitsu tea room whose roof swells upward in a gentle convex curve called mukuri. Set beside the straight eaves of the main house, the difference reads at a glance.

Why it was registered

Registration came under the criterion covering buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of Japan. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database describes the Former Kato Family Residence Detached Wing as a building held together with a light touch, refined in the sukiya manner, through which the etiquette of receiving guests in that period can still be read.

The main house at the centre of the compound is a two-storey timber structure of 212 square meters, said to date from either 1880 or 1886. The site therefore carries two layers: a Meiji landowner's dwelling, and a reception wing grafted on in the early Shōwa years. The detached wing belongs to the later layer.

Building it rearranged the compound. The storehouse originally stood at the northwest corner of the site and was shifted to a position north of the gatehouse to make room. One addition reordered the whole property, and the present spacing of the buildings still shows it.

Sources differ on the date. Kitanagoya City describes the detached wing and tea room as built "between the Taishō and Shōwa eras," a wider span than the "early Shōwa" of the national database. This article follows the national database as the primary source.

What to look for

Ten mats and eight mats in a row make for a modest guest suite by the standards of a wealthy rural family. Nothing here announces status through heavy timber or carving. Members are kept slender, ceilings are held low, and the lightness that results is the whole point of the sukiya approach.

The tea room roof rewards a look from the south. Instead of dropping in a straight line from ridge to eaves, the surface lifts slightly through the middle. The tiles are the same pantiles used elsewhere on the site, so the effect comes entirely from how the pitch was set.

Then there is the passage.

Main house and wing were built decades apart, yet the short covered walk between them meant a visitor could reach the guest rooms without crossing the family's working quarters. Circulation, in other words, encodes manners. It is the clearest place to understand what the Former Kato Family Residence Detached Wing was actually for.

Visiting

Kitanagoya City looks after the compound and opens it Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. It closes on national holidays and over the New Year period. Admission is free and no reservation is needed.

Enquiries about visiting go to the Reminiscence Centre on 0568-24-5337. Bookings for use of the buildings are handled by the city's Museum of History and Folklore on 0568-25-3600.

By public transport, take the Meitetsu Inuyama Line to Nishiharu Station, transfer to the Kita Bus East Loop Route 1, and get off at Kaisōhō Centre Nishi. From Tokushige-Nagoya Geidai Station on the same line, the Kita Bus East-West Loop reaches the same stop. Parking is available for drivers.

The city publishes no restriction on photography, though events are held on the site from time to time. Ask staff before setting up a tripod. (Hours and admission confirmed 1 September 2026.)