Ito Family Residence Well House

A Thatched Roof Over the Family Well

The Ito Family Residence Well House (伊藤家住宅井戸上屋, Itō-ke Jūtaku Idouwaya) is an early Meiji-era shelter over a well on the Ito family estate in Masuo 4-chome, Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 2, 2018. Built of timber and roofed with Kayabuki thatch, it covers just 1.8 square metres and stands directly south of the cowshed.

It is barely a building at all: a roof raised over a well. The Agency for Cultural Affairs classes it not as a building but as an "other structure", and it is by far the smallest of the six registered items on the estate.

The roof is a thatched gable, Kirizuma-zukuri. Four square posts lean slightly inward as they rise, a technique called Uchikorobi, and are tied together by a head-height tie beam and the eave beams to stiffen the frame. There are no walls; posts and roof alone shelter the well.

Well Curb and Washing Basin

At the centre stands a cylindrical concrete well curb. Running off its south side is a rectangular washing basin with its corners cut at an angle. Drawing water and washing vegetables or tools in it happened side by side, under the same roof.

The shelter is dated to early Meiji, yet the curb is concrete. The pairing suggests a well kept in use for a long time, with its fittings renewed along the way, though no published source dates the curb itself.

Leaning the posts inward gives a small structure stability. Because the posts draw closer together toward the top, the shelter reads almost as a trapezoid when seen head-on.

Dating and Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the Ito Family Residence Well House to the early Meiji era, between 1868 and 1882.

It was registered as a structure that contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The agency describes it as a simple outbuilding that was nonetheless indispensable to daily life, and part of what makes up a traditional farmstead. Before piped water, the well was what made life on a farm possible. Because even this small shelter is on the register, the Ito family estate preserves almost every function of a working farmstead.

Visiting

The Ito Family Residence Well House stands inside a private estate where the owners live, and the property cannot be entered. It is tiny and sits within the farmyard just south of the cowshed, so little of it is likely to be visible from outside.

Directions and visiting etiquette for the estate as a whole are on the Ito Family Residence page.