Ito Family Residence Main House

A Meiji House With a Thatch-Era Frame Under Tile

The Ito Family Residence Main House (伊東家住宅主屋, Itō-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a mid-Meiji residence in Koike, Shibayama, Sanbu District, Chiba Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 17, 2020. Note that the family name here is written 伊東, not the 伊藤 of the similarly named farmstead in Kashiwa. It is a single-storey timber house with a hipped Yosemune-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles and a building area of 219 square metres, standing in the centre of Shibayama, where the town office, post office, bank and shops line the street.

The plot faces east onto an old highway, and the house sits a little north of its centre, facing south. It measures 8 and a half bays by 5 bays. A lean-to Geya runs across the front, and in the middle is a formal entrance with a Shikidai step for receiving guests.

The roof is the story. It was tiled from the start, yet it is pitched as steeply as a thatched roof. The town's description explains that the builders appear to have taken the roof framing used in the large late Edo thatched farmhouses of this area and adapted it to carry tile. The house wears a thatch-era skeleton under a modern covering, a building caught between two ages.

The Hiroma and the Okunoma

Inside, the southeast corner is a Doma earthen floor; the rest is raised. At the centre of the front is the main family room, the Hiroma, and at the back to the northwest is the formal reception room, the Okunoma.

The Okunoma is fitted with a Tsukeshoin writing alcove, a latticework Ranma transom and a Tokonoma. The tsukeshoin is a built-in desk set into a window beside the alcove; the lattice transom is made of fine strips of wood pieced into patterns. Together they mark the room as the place for guests, reached from the formal entrance.

The split between earthen floor and raised rooms follows the old farmhouse plan, while the reception rooms are finished with care. The result reads as a farmhouse layout dressed up for a leading local family.

The Builder: Ito Sukeyuki

The Ito Family Residence Main House was built by Ito Sukeyuki, remembered as one of Shibayama's leading citizens. According to the town, he was born in 1864 and taught at, then ran, the local Koike elementary school.

In 1889 he took leave and sailed to the United States to study law at Cumberland University. Back in Japan in 1890, he joined the Bank of Japan and rose to head its business section. In 1901, while on a study tour of Europe and America, he fell ill and died at the age of 38.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the house to the mid-Meiji era, between 1883 and 1897; the town narrows it to around 1890. That puts construction at about the time Sukeyuki came home from America and started at the central bank. A village headmaster turned overseas law student and central banker built a house that, from the outside, kept faith with the local roof form.

Why It Was Registered

It was registered as a building that contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to the steep tiled roof as showing a transition from thatch. The Chiba Prefectural Board of Education adds that the steep tile roof is thought to be original.

Switching from thatch to tile is not a matter of swapping one covering for another; the loads and the pitch are different. The Ito Family Residence Main House shows how carpenters, midway through that change, put their thatched-roof framing skills to new use.

Visiting and Getting There

The Ito Family Residence Main House is privately owned and is not open to the public. The town states that visitors may not enter the grounds. View it from the public road, quietly, and avoid photographing the family's living spaces.

By public transport, the town's Shibayama Fureai community bus runs between Shibayama-Chiyoda Station on the Shibayama Railway and Matsuo Station on the JR Sobu Line, stopping at the Shibayama Town Office. It does not run on Sundays, public holidays or over the New Year period (December 29 to January 3).

By car, the town gives about 10 minutes to the town office from the Matsuo-Yokoshiba interchange on the Ken-O Expressway and Chiba-Togane Road, and about 26 minutes from the Narita interchange on the Shin-Kuko Expressway.

For questions about the property as a cultural asset, contact the Culture Promotion Section of the Shibayama Board of Education (0479-77-1861).