Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate

A Concrete Gate That Pretends to Be Wood

The Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate (久野家住宅（愛山居）庭門, Kuno-ke Jūtaku Aizankyo Niwamon) is a garden entrance of the late Taisho era, between 1919 and 1926, standing south-east of the main house on a private estate in Kagiyamachi, Tokai City, Aichi Prefecture, and it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 6 March 2024. It marks the threshold between the house and the garden that opens to the south.

The gate is built of concrete and covers an area of 0.9 square metres. The Agency for Cultural Affairs carries it under registration number 23-0601, counted as one unit and classified among residential structures other than buildings. A structure roughly the size of half a tatami mat holds an entry of its own on the national list.

No document gives the year of construction. Form and workmanship place the Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate in the late Taisho era, contemporary with the main house of 1925, which was designed by Nishimura Isaku.

Giboku and the Grounds for Registration

The material is giboku, concrete worked to imitate natural timber. Four posts finished in mortar rise from the ground, and branch-shaped pieces link them at top and bottom to form something like an arch. The connections do not run as straight members between posts; they curve and cross as branches would.

The Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate was registered under the clause covering work that would be difficult to reproduce, while the main house came in as a model of design. Reproduction is hard because the surface is made by hand. A plasterer builds up the mortar, cuts it back and presses in the grain on the spot. Nothing here can be cast from a mould and repeated.

According to Tokai City, production of giboku in Japan began around the end of the Meiji era and into the Taisho period, and examples survive in Aichi gardens from the middle Taisho years through the early Showa era. This gate is regarded as one of the earlier ones.

The garden gate, the gateposts and the main house all entered the register on 6 March 2024.

Look for the Wrinkles and the Knots

The interest of the Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate lies in its surface. Wrinkles in the bark, the swollen scar where a branch was cut away: the plasterer modelled all of it in mortar, and none of it is structural.

From a few steps back the eye reads an arched timber gate. Up close the material is plainly concrete. How far the maker pushed the imitation is a question each knot answers on its own.

There are four posts, two on each side, joined overhead. The recorded area of 0.9 square metres covers the ground those four occupy. It is a gate for one person at a time, sized for a garden rather than for a carriage.

Arches repeat across the main house, over the south windows and between the veranda posts, and the arch of this gate belongs to the same family of shapes in a different material. The estate tried the same idea twice in two ways: the gateposts at the eastern entrance face reinforced concrete with real stone, while the Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate shapes concrete into imitation wood.

Visiting

The Kuno Family Residence (Aizankyo) Garden Gate stands inside the grounds of a privately owned estate and is not a visitor site. Because it faces the garden south-east of the house, it cannot be seen from the public road. Access depends on the occasional special openings.

The property has taken part in Aitatehaku, the annual programme through which owners of registered cultural properties in Aichi Prefecture open their buildings for a limited period, sometimes with the owner acting as guide. Participation varies year to year, so check the organiser's website or contact the Social Education Division of the Tokai City Board of Education before making the trip.

When an opening is held, photography follows the instructions of the owner and the organiser. From the street to the east the stone-faced gateposts are visible, but the garden gate lies well inside the property.

The nearest station is Minami-Kagiya on the Meitetsu Kowa Line, about 500 metres to the north and roughly a ten-minute walk. From Meitetsu Nagoya Station the journey takes around 30 minutes, changing at Otagawa for the Kowa Line.