Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House

What the Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House Is

The Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House (山口家住宅主屋, Yamaguchi-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late Edo period farmhouse in the town of Kanie, Aichi Prefecture, added to the national list of Registered Tangible Cultural Property holdings on 26 January 2011 (Heisei 23). It is a single-storey timber building with a floor area of 192 square meters.

The house sits slightly east of the centre of its walled plot and faces south. It measures 14 meters along the front and 6.8 meters in depth. The main frame carries an Irimoya-zukuri roof covered in Kayabuki, and a lower pent roof of Sangawara-buki tile, the Geya, wraps around all four sides. That pairing is what gives the building its stacked profile: a thick mass of thatch above, a low grey tiled apron below.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates construction to between 1751 and 1830, with alterations made during the Meiji era. Inside, an earth-floored Doma occupies the east end and raised rooms fill the west, laid out on the three-room hall plan common to farmhouses of the region, with a Buddhist altar room projecting outward. The agency records the framing as yotsudate, a construction method handed down in the Owari district of what is now western Aichi.

Registered, Not Designated

Japan protects buildings under two separate systems, and the Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House falls under the registration system rather than the designation system. The distinction matters, because the two carry different legal footing and different obligations. The building holds registration number 23-0330.

The criterion cited for the listing is that the building serves as a model of its form. The agency's entry singles out the yotsudate framing, which places this house among the surviving examples of how rural Owari carpenters built, altered less than most of its contemporaries.

Two other buildings on the same plot went onto the register the same day: a tea house from 1893 and a front gate from 1908. Each was registered separately and carries its own number, so the three are independent listings rather than one entry split three ways. The main house is the oldest of them.

What to Look For

The roof does most of the talking. The thatched upper section rises to a high ridge, and on the gable ends the triangular face of the Irimoya-zukuri form comes into view. Around its skirt, the tiled Geya runs out on all four sides. Two roofs of different material and different pitch, one sitting on the other, read more clearly from a distance than up close.

Scale is the second thing. Fourteen meters of frontage, 6.8 meters of depth, 192 square meters of floor area. For a private house that is generous, and standing square in front of it you cannot take in the whole width at once.

A tea house adjoins the Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House at its southwest corner, built to connect with the broad veranda that runs along the main building. The front gate stands toward the east end of the southern boundary, setting the face the household presents to the street. The way the three sit together tells you how the compound was meant to be entered and used.

Visiting the Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House

This is a private home and it is not open to the public. You cannot enter the grounds and there is no interior tour. What you can do is look at the exterior from the road that runs past the front. People live here, so peering over walls or walking up to the gate is out of order.

Photography is limited to the exterior as seen from the public road. This is a residential street, so setting up a tripod and lingering is not welcome.

The closest station is Kanie on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line, about 5 minutes on foot. From Kanie on the JR Kansai Main Line the walk takes about 20 minutes.

For context on the town's heritage, the Kanie Town Museum of History and Folklore sits nearby at 1-214 Shiro, Kanie (telephone 0567-95-3812). It opens from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., closes on Mondays and from December 29 to January 3, and admission is free. The museum also distributes the town's cultural property guide map, which covers the Yamaguchi Family Residence Main House along with the other listed buildings in Kanie.