Kimura Family Residence Bathhouse

Six square metres between the house and the storehouse

Kimura Family Residence Bathhouse (木村家住宅風呂, Kimura-ke Jūtaku Furo) is a single-storey timber building at Mitsu 1-chome in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, dated to about 1881 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 March 2019.

It measures 6.2 square metres, which makes it the smallest of the four registered structures on the Kimura property and one of the smallest listed buildings in the prefecture. It sits at the centre of the south side of the plot, in the gap between the main house and the storehouse, under a single-pitch roof of metal sheet carried on projecting purlins that push the eaves well out. The building doubles as the covered route between the two larger structures. On the north side the roof sweeps down 1.4 metres toward the courtyard, forming a shelter over the passage rather than a decorative canopy.

A storeroom converted in 1914

Kimura Family Residence Bathhouse did not begin as a bathhouse. It was built as a storeroom at about the same time as the main house, and Matsuyama City records that it was converted in 1914, when a daughter was born to the head of the household, Kimura Matasaburō. The east half became the bathroom, the west half the boiler space where the water was heated.

The division between the two halves is still legible. So is the reason the date is known at all: most households never recorded when their bath was installed, and here the occasion stayed in the family's memory because a child had just been born. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the building in the same terms, as a former storeroom later remodelled with a bath in the east half and a boiler space in the west.

Bats and flower diamonds

The interior wall of the bathroom is faced with decorative tiles combining a bat motif and a flower-diamond pattern. Matsuyama City notes that comparable tiles have been identified in Iyo City within Ehime Prefecture and in Nagano Prefecture, and that on the evidence of those parallels these were probably fired in the Meiji or Taishō period at Seto in Aichi Prefecture or on Awaji in Hyōgo Prefecture. For a room of this size, the tiling is a considerable expense, and it is the clearest surviving trace of how a prominent local family lived in the Taishō years.

This is why the registration matters. Kimura Family Residence Bathhouse holds registration number 38-129, the last of the four buildings listed here on 29 March 2019, under the criterion that a structure contributes to the historic character of the national landscape. Service buildings are the first things a household replaces. A bathhouse of 6.2 square metres that survives with its original tiles, its boiler space and its roof over the passage is rarer than the main house it serves.

The building has needed help to get this far. By 2014 the pantiles were leaking badly enough that they were stripped and replaced with metal sheet, and during that work part of the bathroom ceiling gave way where the timber had rotted.

Visiting Kimura Family Residence Bathhouse

The property is privately owned and is opened by a volunteer group on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., when the main house runs as Kimura-tei Café. The bathhouse lies on the path between the main house and the storehouse, so visitors normally pass it, but whether the tiled interior can be looked into depends on the day and on how the building is being used. Extra openings are held for events, and there is a winter break, so telephone 070-5510-3145 or check the operators' Instagram account before you go.

To reach the site, take the Iyotetsu Takahama Line to Minatoyama Station, walk two minutes to the landing, and cross on the Mitsu Ferry. The crossing counts as a city road, so it is free, and it runs from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. every day of the year. From the landing on the Mitsu side the property is about a minute on foot. Mitsu Station is about fifteen minutes away. No parking is provided.

Photography has not been confirmed as permitted indoors; ask the volunteers first. If you are allowed to photograph the tiles, get low and use whatever daylight comes through the doorway, since the room is small and dim and a flash flattens the glaze.