Nakahama Family Residence Gate

What the Nakahama Family Residence Gate Is

Nakahama Family Residence Gate (中濱家住宅門, Nakahama-ke Jūtaku Mon) is an early Showa-period gate in Arimatsu, Midori Ward, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2008. It stands on the north edge of the property, facing the Tekoshi River. The opening is 1.7 meters wide, the structure is timber, and the roof is Sangawara-buki. Its register number is 23-0281, and the entry covers 1 building.

The type is udegimon, a bracket-arm gate. Two posts carry a head beam across their tops, and arms projecting from the posts front and back support the eaves. The eaves are framed with a single tier of widely spaced Taruki. A pair of doors, each cut from a single plank, hangs in the opening.

The front of Arimatsu is the old Tōkaidō highway. In this settlement, established by the Owari domain in 1608 between the post towns of Narumi and Chiryū, the dyers' main houses line the highway with wide frontages. Nakahama Family Residence Gate faces the opposite way, toward the river on the north.

Why It Was Registered

Nakahama Family Residence Gate was listed under the criterion for structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. A structure 1.7 meters across earned national registration not on its own scale but as part of the enclosure around the property. The Agency for Cultural Affairs description calls the gate refined and notes that together with the board fences running away on either side it forms a fine residential setting.

Those fences stand on a stone wall that wraps the eastern and northern edges of the plot. On the east the wall is built of cobbles the size of a head; on the north it is laid in finely cut stone with hexagonal faces, and the gate opens on that carefully worked side. Fence, gate and wall are separate entries on the register, but anyone walking the riverside lane sees them as one continuous frontage.

The Arimatsu townscape was selected in 2016 as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. The reasoning behind that selection covers not only the main houses along the highway but the run of gates and fences that gives the town its outline. Nakahama Family Residence Gate holds up that outline on the side the highway never shows you.

What to Look For

A bracket-arm gate carries its eaves on posts and horizontal members alone. To follow how Nakahama Family Residence Gate works, begin at the head beam spanning the tops of the posts. Arms project forward and back from the posts, a purlin rests on their ends, and the purlin in turn carries the Taruki. With so few members involved, the eye can trace what holds up what.

The eaves use a single tier of widely spaced rafters. Looking up from below, sky shows between them. The effect is very different from the deep, densely packed eaves of a temple gate; the roof reads as something light resting on the posts.

The doors are each cut from one uninterrupted plank. At an opening of 1.7 meters the timber can be read whole, with no joint to break it. Closed, the grain of the plank is the face of the gate; open, the view down into the grounds takes its place.

The Tekoshi River runs in front of the gate. City of Nagoya records describe the Tekoshi as rising near the city boundary with Toyoake and running 3.0 kilometers through Midori Ward before joining the Ōgi River. Midori Ward records add that local people long called the stream behind the town the Aizome River, the indigo-dyeing river, because the dye houses upstream changed the colour of the water on some days. Nakahama Family Residence Gate is the opening onto that waterside.

Visiting

Nakahama Family Residence Gate is privately owned, and visitors cannot pass through it into the grounds. Seen from outside, it can be viewed at any time from the lane along the river, and there is no admission charge.

The nearest station is Arimatsu on the Meitetsu Nagoya Main Line, about a 5-minute walk. Coming from the old Tōkaidō, pass the front of the main house, turn north along the east side of the plot and come out on the riverside lane. Looking at the highway frontage first and then walking round to the north lets you compare the public face and the working face of a single property.

Photography from the public road is fine. The gate faces north, so direct sun rarely falls on its front; overcast days and the brighter middle hours give the clearest view of the detail. The lane beside the fence is narrow, so take care not to block it.