Kamiya Family Residence Waiting Arbor

Registered at 1.3 square metres

The Kamiya Family Residence Waiting Arbor (神谷家住宅腰掛待合, Kamiya-ke Jūtaku Koshikake Machiai) is a garden waiting shelter of 1923 in Shinsakae, Naka Ward, Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 13 August 2012. Timber-framed and roofed in copper sheet, it measures 2.4 metres by 1.4 metres, a floor area of 1.3 square metres.

It faces the Koan tea room across the garden. In the layout of a roji, the path leading to a tea room, a waiting arbor is where guests sit until they are signalled to enter. It has walls and a gabled roof, yet it belongs more to the garden than to the category of buildings.

The walls are earth plaster with cedar bark applied to the lower band. Only the south side, where the principal guest sits, is pierced by a half-moon window. The Kamiya Family Residence Waiting Arbor carries registration number 23-0343 and was moved on rollers to a new position in 1995.

Part of a complete garden sequence

The registration criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of Japan. A structure of 1.3 square metres could hardly make that contribution on its own. The Kamiya Family Residence Waiting Arbor qualifies because it survives alongside the Hakuroken wing, the Koan tea room and the inner gate, so that an entire roji sequence remains intact on one plot.

Surviving tea rooms are not rare. Surviving tea rooms with their gate and their waiting place still in position are much rarer. Here the sequence a guest performs, passing the gate, sitting down to wait, then moving on to the tea room when called, can still be traced in the arrangement of the buildings.

The 1995 relocation was a response to development pressure in the surrounding blocks. The position shifted, but the relationship across the garden with the tea room was preserved.

What to look for

The half-moon window comes first. It is cut only on the south side, at the seat reserved for the principal guest. Varying the treatment of a wall according to who sits in front of it is a habit of thought that runs through tea architecture, and here it takes physical form.

The framing repays attention as well. Members finished by adzing, with the tool marks left visible, are combined with round poles retaining a flat face. Adzing deliberately refuses the smoothness that a saw and plane would give. In a structure this small, the Kamiya Family Residence Waiting Arbor puts that handwork at arm's length from the viewer.

The cedar bark on the lower wall protects the earth plaster from splash-back, and it also sets up a contrast of texture. Above it the copper roof takes on a green patina with age, layered against bark and clay.

Visiting and access

The Kamiya Family Residence Waiting Arbor stands within a private residence and is not open to the public. The grounds cannot be entered, and later buildings around the plot mean it cannot be seen from the road. It is not a property to approach for viewing or photography.

The address is 2-chome Shinsakae in Naka Ward, in a block roughly five minutes east on foot from Shinsakaemachi Station on the Higashiyama subway line. Anyone who wants to see a waiting arbor in use should look instead for a tea garden that opens to visitors. The City of Nagoya list of cultural properties includes registered waiting arbors on publicly accessible sites, which is a practical way to understand how the roji sequence works.