Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House

A Meiji Retirement House Behind the Shop Front

The Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House (宮内家住宅隠居所, Miyauchi-ke Jūtaku Inkyojo) is a retirement building of around 1912 standing within the Miyauchi Family Residence in Nadamachi, Iyo City, Ehime Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 10 May 2018. It sits behind the main house on an east-west axis: two storeys of timber under an Irimoya-zukuri hipped-and-gabled roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles, with a building area of 96 square meters. Locally it goes by the name Shin-Inkyo, the new retirement house.

An inkyo is a separate building put up for a household head who has handed the business to the next generation. The Miyauchi family came to this shore from the village of Kaminada after a domain land exchange in 1636, laid out the town of Nadamachi, and served as town elders while brewing sake and trading Ozu washi paper. By the late Meiji era, when the Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House went up, the family had held the same plot for close to three centuries.

Four items on this plot were listed together on the same day. Of those four, only the Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House dates from the Meiji era; the main house, the old retirement house, and the stone tide basin all belong to the Edo period.

Listed as a Model of Design

Japan's registration system records buildings under one of three criteria, and the Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House was entered under the one reserved for work that sets a standard in design. The main house and the old retirement house were listed for their contribution to the historic landscape, the tide basin for being difficult to reproduce. The Ehime Prefectural Board of Education describes the interiors here as refined, with well-appointed formal rooms on both floors.

The date matters as much as the quality. Built at the very end of the Meiji era, the building keeps the room hierarchy of Shoin-zukuri while the choice of timber and the way joints are handled lean toward Sukiya-zukuri, the lighter idiom of the tea house. Set beside the old retirement house of a century earlier, it shows one family rebuilding the same kind of accommodation to a changed taste.

Details Worth Knowing

Both floors of the Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House are divided into two eight-mat rooms. Beside the Tokonoma alcove on the ground floor, a set of shelves called a kasumi-dana rises in three staggered tiers, named for the way the boards drift past one another like layers of haze. A round window opens next to it, and the light picks out the edge of each tier.

Verandas run along the south and east faces. The Taruki rafters are unsquared logs, stripped of bark and left round, so the underside of the eaves reads as a row of curves rather than a grid. Carpenters reserved that treatment for mountain villas and tea rooms.

On the upper floor the rafters fan outward toward the corners. The transoms carry round Shitaji-mado windows, the type that exposes the bamboo lath of the wall, set in a staggered rather than symmetrical rhythm. That combination is unusually elaborate for a retirement wing attached to a merchant house.

The roof would repay a look, since its pantiles contrast with the heavier paired tiling of the main house out front. It cannot be seen from the road, however: the Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House stands deep in the compound.

Why This Building Cannot Be Visited

The Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House is closed to visitors. The compound remains a private home, access stops at the main house on the street, and the retirement house behind it is off limits. There is also no vantage point from the road, so a visit will not put the building in view.

The main house at the front has been repaired and now operates as a community space called Musee Nadaya, rented by advance booking in blocks between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. The dedicated line is 080-2981-6281, and that is also the number to use for questions about the buildings further back, including the Miyauchi Family Residence Retirement House.

Photography does not arise in practice, since the building cannot be reached or seen from outside. Please treat the site as someone's home.

Nadamachi is about three minutes on foot from either Iyo Station on the JR Yosan Line or Gunchuko Station on the Iyotetsu Gunchu Line. The old highway streetscape and the front of the main house can be viewed freely. Fifteen free parking spaces are shared between the lot behind the main house and the Eiyoji temple lot.