Suzuki Family Residence (Numa, Tateyama)

From a Domain Inn to the Red Gate Clinic

The Suzuki Family Residence in Numa, Tateyama (鈴木家住宅, Suzuki-ke Jūtaku) is a house completed in 1924 in Numa, Tateyama City, Chiba Prefecture, whose Main House, storehouse and front gate were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on May 15, 2007. All three were built in the same year and registered on the same day.

Numa was a small port where coastal cargo ships put in from the Edo period onward. The Suzuki family ran an inn here under the trade name Nanbuya, and served as the regular lodging for the Morioka domain, whose ships called at Numa. The name most likely refers to the Nanbu clan, the lords of Morioka.

In 1888 the family closed the inn and opened a medical practice. Its gateposts were painted red, and people began calling the clinic Akamon, the Red Gate. According to Tateyama City, the nickname is still in everyday use.

The present buildings went up immediately after the Great Kantō Earthquake to designs by an architect from Yokohama, and all three were finished in 1924. The architect's name does not appear in any published record we could find. The Tateyama Naval Air Group was established nearby in 1930, and in the last months of the war in 1945 it reportedly served as a place where naval officers gathered socially.

How the Property Is Laid Out

The house faces the road to the north. A stone gate stands right on the road line, a front garden opens behind it, and the Main House sits at the back of the garden, placed so that it looks out toward Tateyama Port. The storehouse stands east of the Main House and is joined to it by a small covered vestibule.

The builders took care to make the three read as one ensemble. The storehouse walls and the east side of the Main House share a mortar finish, a washed aggregate surface (Araidashi) scored with false joints to look like dressed stone, while the gate is built of rounded cobbles set in mortar.

• Main House: 1924, timber, 2 storeys with a single-storey section, Japanese-Western hybrid, building area 285 square metres
• Storehouse: 1924, timber, 2 storeys, building area 32 square metres
• Front Gate: 1924, mortared cobblestone, 3.2 metres high and 2.8 metres wide

Getting There and What You Can See

The Suzuki Family Residence is a private home and is not open to the public; Tateyama City's own page says so plainly. You cannot enter the grounds, so a visit means looking at the buildings from the street. The front gate stands on the road line and is easy to see.

The nearest station is Tateyama on the JR Uchibō Line; from there, take a local bus or a taxi. Drivers should use the Tomiura interchange on the Futtsu-Tateyama Road. The house has no visitor parking, so avoid stopping for long on the narrow local roads.

Photograph only from the street and keep out of the way of residents and traffic. What each building looks like from outside is covered on the pages for the Main House, storehouse and front gate.