Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor

What the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor Is

The Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor (徳川美術館餘芳軒東屋, also written Yohōken azumaya) is a mid-Showa era waiting shelter in the grounds of the Tokugawa Art Museum in Tokugawacho, Higashi-ku, Nagoya City, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) in 2014. As the name says, it belongs to the Yohoken tea building nearby.

Its building area is 7.5 square meters. The structure is single-story timber under a sheet copper roof. The plan is a square of 9 shaku, about 2.7 meters on a side, and four roof slopes rise from it to meet at a single point. The building dates from the mid-Showa era, roughly 1946 to 1965, and was moved twice, in 1973 and again in 1987.

Inside there is one bench, set against the east face. Guests invited to a tea gathering sit here while they wait to be called in. Everything about the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor is arranged around that single use.

Why the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor Was Registered

The criterion applied is that the building is a model of its type in form and design. Its registration number is 23-0411, dated 7 October 2014, when Shinkuan and Yohoken and the Yamanochaya were registered alongside it.

The ceiling carries the case. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes small bark-on logs laid out in a fan to form a kasa-tenjo, an umbrella ceiling, under a light pyramidal roof. Thin poles radiate from the centre like the ribs seen when you look up into an open umbrella, and within a floor area of 7.5 square meters this is where the craft is concentrated.

The posts matter too. The four corner posts are debushi maruta, logs chosen and kept with their knots standing proud of the surface rather than dressed away. Between them stand intermediate posts of log with the bark still on. Both choices run against the usual instinct to square timber and even out its faces. The eaves are finished as Keshō-yaneura, leaving the rafters visible instead of boxing them in.

That a building of 7.5 square meters holds a national registration is worth pausing on. Small as it is, the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor was designed as a necessary part of the garden path that leads to a tea room, not as an afterthought placed in the shrubbery.

What to Look For at the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor

This is a building made to be looked up at. Sit on the bench inside the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor and your eye goes to the ceiling on its own. The bark-on poles fanning out from the centre were set with that seated viewpoint in mind.

Look at how the bark has weathered. Bark-on logs change with time and no two faces hold the same depth of colour, which gives a texture that milled and squared timber cannot. For a small shelter standing on a garden path, the unevenness is the point.

The roof is sheet copper. Set against the tiled roofs of Shinkuan and Yohoken and of the Yamanochaya elsewhere in the grounds, this is the one building of the group covered in a light material. Keeping the weight of tile off a plan only 9 shaku square is what lets the pyramid above it read as light rather than squat.

The two relocations are worth knowing about as you look. The building changed position in 1973 and again in 1987, and at 7.5 square meters, being movable is itself part of what the design allows.

Visiting the Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor

The Tokugawa Art Museum Yohoken Arbor is normally closed. It does not appear on the gallery route, and a museum ticket will not get you to it.

As with the Yohoken it belongs to, the chance to see it comes with the events that use the tea rooms. The museum states that participants in such events may view and use them. The main occasion is the Tokugawa Tea Gathering, held each year between October and November, and the tea rooms may also be hired through the museum's facility booking procedure. Dates and application methods change from year to year, so check the official site first.

The museum opens 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., last admission 4:30 p.m., closed Mondays; when a Monday falls on a public holiday or substitute holiday, the closure moves to the next weekday. Admission covers the museum and the Nagoya City Hosa Library: 2,000 yen for adults, 1,200 yen for high school and university students, free for elementary and junior high school students. Photography with a smartphone or compact camera is permitted in the galleries, while photography around the tea rooms follows the rules of each event.

The nearest station is Ozone on the JR Chuo Line, about 10 minutes on foot from the south exit. From Ozone on the Meijo subway line, allow about 15 minutes from exit E5. City and Meitetsu buses stop at Tokugawaen Shindeki, about 3 minutes away.