Aizanso Main House

About the Aizanso Main House

The Aizanso Main House (愛山荘主屋, Aizansō Shuoku) is a two-storey timber residence built in 1916 at Aizanso in Wakatake-cho, Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2017. It has a tiled roof and a building area of 245 square metres.

The house holds the north end of the estate and looks south across the garden. A corridor on the east side leads to the annex and another on the southwest to the kura zashiki, and most of the other buildings at Aizanso are laid out from these two links.

It is the oldest of the nine registered structures on the site.

Why it was registered

The Aizanso Main House was registered under the criterion for buildings that serve as a model of good design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to two things in particular: the open plan of the ground floor, and the care spent on the rooms upstairs.

Downstairs, an anteroom behind the entrance leads to two Zashiki reception rooms set side by side. Along the garden side runs a veranda floored with tatami rather than boards. Slide back the fittings and room, veranda and garden become one continuous space.

Upstairs, a board veranda on the east side faces Mount Hino. The rooms are finished in prized timbers, and the Ranma transoms between them are boards cut in Sukashibori openwork. The house keeps the conventions of the formal Japanese reception room while giving the view and the sense of openness a much larger part to play, which is what makes it a good record of upper-class domestic building in the Taisho period.

What to look for

The tatami veranda

A veranda laid with tatami is meant to be sat on, not walked along. It turns the edge of the house into part of the room and the garden into its view. If you notice one thing about the ground floor of the Aizanso Main House, make it this.

Upstairs

If you are shown upstairs, step out onto the east veranda and look for Mount Hino. The ground floor was built for the garden; the upper floor was built for the mountain.

The openwork transoms are each cut from a single board, and in low sun their patterns are thrown across the mats. Look at them alongside the fine timbers around the alcove and you get a sense of how much went into the finishing.

The south front

From the garden the whole elevation is easy to take in: tatami veranda below, board veranda above, and two tiers of tiled eaves running level across the front.

Seeing it

The rooms of the Aizanso Main House now serve as dining rooms for the restaurant Koshi no Kuni Aizanso, so going inside generally means booking a meal. Seating is decided by the restaurant; if you would like to see an upstairs room, mention it when you book.

Follow the staff's guidance on photography indoors and keep other guests out of your pictures. The official website says nothing about visits to the building alone, so contact the restaurant in advance if that is what you want. Directions and opening hours are on the Aizanso page.