Former Hongo Residence Western Wing: Four Rooms, Two Cultures, One Corridor
Sixty-eight square metres is not much of a building. This one manages, within that footprint, to hold two Western rooms and two Japanese rooms, arranged in pairs on either side of a central corridor.
That plan is the point. The central-corridor house was the reforming layout of its day in Japan, promoted from the 1910s onward as a rational alternative to the traditional arrangement in which rooms opened directly into one another. Circulation was separated from occupation. Privacy became possible. In the Hongo wing the corridor also does diplomatic work, letting a household receive guests in chairs on one side and on tatami on the other without either mode intruding on the other.
The wing was completed in Showa 3 (1928) and attached to the south side of the main house, which by then was 28 years old. Design is credited to the Hogetsusha construction office; the master carpenter was Terashima Matsugoro, who had built the family's miso storehouse seven years earlier. Timber frame, single storey, gabled on an east-west axis, roofed in sheet iron.
The Surface Treatment
The exterior is where this building spends its budget. Walls carry an ochre Doitsu-kabe finish, literally German wall, a rough-textured render produced by flicking mortar onto the surface and leaving the resulting pebbled skin unsmoothed. The technique arrived in Japan through the wave of European architectural influence around the turn of the twentieth century and became a signature of Taisho and early Showa domestic building.
Below that, the dado is faced in brick tile, a decorative band running around the base of the walls. Thin brick tile of this kind allowed a timber-framed house to borrow the visual weight of masonry without carrying it, and small buildings all over Japan in these decades used it for exactly that reason.
At each gable end, two bay windows project. Four in total, distributed symmetrically, and they do most of the work of making a small structure read as an event rather than an annexe. Their profile is the detail the national registration record singles out.
Registration came on 29 November 2016, number 05-0213, under the criterion for structures contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The reasoning is legible from the street: this ochre, brick-footed, bay-windowed volume sits against a compound of dark timber and white plaster, and the contrast is itself the historical record. A landlord family in rural Akita, in the third year of Showa, chose to announce that it lived partly in the West.
Visiting
The wing is entered from the main house, and the seat by its garden side is worth taking. The Japanese garden on the property is visible from the veranda and from the wing, and the family's papers include a coloured garden design drawn in Taisho 11 (1922) by Nagaoka Yasuhei, one of the founding figures of modern Japanese landscape design.
The whole property passed to Daisen City in March 2017, given by the ninth head of the family, Hongo Hajime. Seasonal opening began in 2019 and now runs from late April to mid-November, closing before the snow. Admission is free.
Rooms in the main house and at the neighbouring former Arakawa Residence can be hired for meals and concerts, at 1,100 yen for a half day and 1,650 yen for a full day, with applications due three days ahead. It is an unusual arrangement for a registered cultural property, and it reflects the philosophy behind the registration system: buildings that stay in use tend to stay standing.
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Q&A
- What is a Doitsu-kabe finish?
- It is a rough render applied by throwing or flicking mortar at the wall and leaving the pebbled texture as it falls. The name means German wall, reflecting the European origin of the technique, and it was widely used on Japanese houses and small commercial buildings in the Taisho and early Showa periods.
- Why build a Western wing rather than a Western house?
- Adding a compact Western structure to an existing Japanese house was the common solution among wealthy families of the period. It provided rooms suitable for chairs, tables and formal Western-style reception, which mattered for dealings with officials and businessmen, while the household continued to live in the Japanese rooms.
- Is there anything on display inside?
- The site hosts changing exhibitions. One long-running display concerns the 36th Ryuo shogi title match: the residence had been selected as the venue for game six, but the series ended earlier, so the game was never played here. The champion visited in December 2023, and photographs, a sealed-move sheet and related material remain on show.
- How does this building relate to the other three registered structures?
- All four were registered on the same day and stand on the same grounds, but they span four eras: the document storehouse of 1869, the main house of 1900, the miso storehouse of 1921 and this wing of 1928. Read in order, they show a single household's architecture shifting across sixty years.
- Is photography allowed?
- General photography for personal use is normally acceptable at the residence, though exhibition material and commercial shooting may be restricted. Confirm on arrival with the reception at the former Arakawa Residence, which serves as the management building during the open season.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Hongo Residence Western Wing (Kyu Hongo-ke Jutaku Yokan) |
|---|---|
| Location | 19 Nishinaka-kamimachi, Kakumagawa-cho, Daisen City, Akita Prefecture |
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structures) |
| Registration date | 29 November 2016 (85th round of registration) |
| Registration number | 05-0213 |
| Registration criterion | Contributing to the historic landscape of the country |
| Date of construction | Showa 3 (1928) |
| Structure | Timber frame, single storey, gabled roof on east-west axis, sheet iron roofing |
| Building area | 68 square metres |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Builders | Design by Hogetsusha construction office; master carpenter Terashima Matsugoro |
| Owner | Daisen City |
| Public access | Open late April to mid-November, 9:00 to 16:00 (last entry 15:30). Closed Mondays. Free admission. |
| Enquiries | Cultural Properties Division, Daisen City (Tel. 0187-63-8972) |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Former Hongo Residence Western Wing
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00011237
- Daisen City: Registered Tangible Cultural Property, Former Hongo Residence
- https://www.city.daisen.lg.jp/archive/contents-11562
- Daisen City: Public Opening of the Former Hongo Residence
- https://www.city.daisen.lg.jp/archive/contents-9764
Last verified: 2026.07.22