Kubo Family Residence Front Gate and Wall

The Face the Street Sees

The Kubo Family Residence Front Gate and Wall (久保家住宅表門及び塀, Kuboke Jūtaku Omotemon oyobi Hei) is a wooden gate with its flanking plastered walls at 919-1 Dōgo Yunomachi in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture, built around 1906 on the approach road to Isaniwa Shrine and entered on the national list of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 27 February 2023.

Of the five registered structures on this physician's estate, this is the one every passer-by meets. The main house, the waiting arbor and the partition gate all sit behind it. The gate itself has a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof in Sangawara-buki pantiles, an opening 3.5 metres wide, and short return walls at either side. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the wall as running 26 metres in total.

The gate faces north, toward the shrine approach, and stands toward the north-west of the plot. Matsuyama City puts the construction at about 1899, the year Kubo Hikoji opened his clinic; the Agency for Cultural Affairs gives around 1906. In 2021 the structure went through a thorough repair that included re-laying the tiles, replacing decayed timber and strengthening the foundations.

Why the Gate and Wall Are on the National Register

The registration system, created in 1996, protects buildings that remain in ordinary use, and it was applied here under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Kubo Family Residence Front Gate and Wall carries registration number 38-0169 and was registered on the same day as the main house, the detached wing, the waiting arbor and the partition gate.

A gate and a wall do not house anything. What they do is set the tone of a street. Dōgo Yunomachi has rebuilt itself repeatedly around the hot spring, and along the shrine approach the run of grey plaster and boarded skirting is now one of the few long stretches of Meiji-period frontage left. Read the wall and you can still work out where a professional household began and the public road ended.

What to Look For

The gate is an udegimon, a type in which the roof rests on brackets thrown out from the two main posts rather than on a full framed structure. The rafters are Taruki set far apart with lath worked between them, and the ridge stands 1.25 metres back from the eaves edge, which is deep for a gate of this width. Because the roof is carried across the return walls as well as the opening, the whole assembly reads heavier than its span would suggest.

Look at the doors. The outer face of each leaf is a single board with a frame run around it, and no metal fittings are applied at all. No studs, no plates, no ring pulls. In a town that likes display, the owner of this gate spent his effort on withholding it.

Above the opening runs a transom of five horizontal slats. A side door sits in the eastern return wall for everyday use, so that the main leaves stayed shut except when they were needed.

Then follow the wall in each direction. The eastern length runs 9.84 metres, boarded at the base and finished above in grey Shikkui plaster, with lattice windows in three of its eight bays. The western length runs 6.96 metres and repeats the same treatment, with a lattice window in the middle bay of three. At the north-west corner of the plot the wall turns south, and along that return the height drops by a step and the finish becomes plainer, with plaster alone and no boarding. The street face was worth the extra work; the side elevation was not.

Visiting

The Kubo Family Residence Front Gate and Wall stands directly on a public road, so it can be looked at closely at any hour without permission, appointment or charge. The land behind it is private and there is no public opening of the estate.

Stand back on the far side of the approach to take in the full 26 metres of wall with the gate roof against it, then come close for the door boards, the bracket work under the eaves and the lattice windows. When the side door in the eastern return wall happens to be open, the entrance gable of the main house with its carved phoenix pendant is visible through the opening. Photography from the road is unrestricted. Do not step through the gate or reach a camera over the wall.

Take the Iyotetsu city tram to the Dōgo Onsen terminus, walk through the Haikara-dōri arcade to the bathhouse, then turn east onto the approach to Isaniwa Shrine; the gate is on the north side after about eight minutes on foot. Enquiries about the registration go to the Cultural Properties Division of Matsuyama City on 089-948-6603.