Oyama Family Residence

A Farmhouse Where the Stable Comes First

The Oyama Family Residence (大山家住宅, Ōyama-ke Jūtaku) is a thatched farmhouse at Iizuka in the Ugawa district of Mitane Town, Yamamoto County, Akita Prefecture, built in the middle of the nineteenth century and designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on 23 February 1973. The Agency for Cultural Affairs still lists it under the older municipal name as 大山家住宅（秋田県山本郡八竜町）, since Hachiryū Town merged into Mitane Town in 2006.

The plan is an L. A main block runs east to west, and from it a stable wing projects forward, with the entrance placed in that projecting wing rather than in the main body of the house. Northern Akita calls this arrangement chūmon-zukuri, and where the projecting part housed horses it is specified further as umaya-chūmon.

Horses lived under the same roof as the family. That was not sentiment, though the animals were treated as members of the household; a farm worked by horse power in a region with long winters needed its animals close, warm, and reachable without going outdoors. The wide earth-floored doma next to the stable did duty as workshop, storage and winter work space.

Why This House and Not Another

Chūmon-zukuri houses survive in numbers along the Sea of Japan side of the Tōhoku region. The Agency for Cultural Affairs designated this one because of where it sits in the development of the type. Its commentary describes the house as a developed form of the earlier Saga Family Residence, and as showing the process by which the single-wing plan grew toward the ryō-chūmon form with wings projecting on both sides. In other words, this is a house you can date by its shape.

The commentary adds two judgements: that the building represents the type at the point where it reached completion, and that its state of preservation is very good. Local descriptions add that it retains the form it had when first built.

Rank shows in the carpentry. The Oyama family served for generations as murayaku, village officials, and the house uses a bracket system called segai, in which arms extend from the purlin out to the eaves to carry the roof. Under the domain's rules segai was permitted only to households of upper standing; ordinary farmhouses could not use it. The version here is sumigi-iri segai, with a corner rafter incorporated into the assembly.

Two more features do not belong to standard farmhouse building. The windows carry degōshi, projecting lattice screens of the kind normally found on merchant town houses. And wild shiba grass is grown along the ridge of the thatch, a technique uncommon in Akita, used to bind and protect the roof crest.

Reading the Plan

Measurements from the national database give the main block 21.8 metres along the ridge and 12.1 metres across. The east end is hipped-and-gabled, the west end plainly hipped. The chūmon wing measures 6.1 by 7.3 metres and is hipped. Everything is thatched.

Inside the main block, the sequence runs from the doma into four living rooms and then three formal rooms. That progression, work space to family space to guest space, is the standard grammar of a substantial rural house, but the number of formal rooms indicates a family that received visitors on business.

What strikes people who see it is how little decoration there is. No carving competes for attention. Descriptions from Mitane Town make the same observation: the design is plain, and what stands out is refinement rather than the muscular quality often admired in farmhouse architecture.

One date discrepancy is worth knowing. The Agency for Cultural Affairs assigns the building to the mid-nineteenth century, late Edo period. Some local write-ups describe it as roughly 270 years old, which would place it considerably earlier. The national database reading is the one to rely on.

Seeing It in Person

This is not a museum you can walk into. The house is a residence, and viewing requires an advance booking. Mitane Town directs enquiries to the Hachiryū Community Centre on 0185-85-2177, or to the Lifelong Learning Section of the Board of Education on 0185-87-2113. There is no admission charge.

Access into the interior is currently restricted. Mitane Town states that visitors are shown the house from the entrance area and cannot proceed into the inner rooms. Local listings give viewing hours of roughly 9:00 to 15:00, though since every visit is arranged in advance, the time will be settled when you book. Ask about photography at the same time.

Getting there needs a car. The nearest railway station, Kitakanaoka on the JR Ōu Main Line, lies about four kilometres away on foot, and no bus route within walking distance runs often enough to make a round trip workable. From Moritake Station the drive takes around fifteen minutes.

If you are making the trip, the Kotoōka History and Folklore Museum elsewhere in Mitane Town holds a building called Mitane no Yakata, a chūmon-zukuri farmhouse of the early Meiji period relocated and restored on site, displayed with farm tools and household implements. Seeing a chūmon plan you can walk through, then seeing the Oyama house from its threshold, makes a more complete visit than either alone. Viewing there also needs prior contact with the Lifelong Learning Section.