Restaurant Tenguro

A Restaurant in Sabae's Old Jinya Town

Restaurant Tenguro (料亭天狗楼, Ryōtei Tengurō) is a traditional restaurant in Nakakojicho, Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture, whose four buildings, the oldest dating from between 1883 and 1897, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 17 November 2015. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives its location as 32-4 Nakakojicho, while Sabae City's heritage pages use the street address 2-1-25 Honmachi. The two systems point to the same lot.

A ryotei is the formal end of Japanese dining: meals served course by course in tatami rooms, usually to private parties and banquets. Tenguro's buildings cover the whole operation, from the rooms where guests sat to the kitchen that fed them.

The Agency describes the neighbourhood as a former Jinya town. In the Edo period Sabae was the seat of a small domain that governed from a jinya, an administrative compound rather than a castle, and the streets grew up around it.

The buildings arrived at different times. The Ryotei Building, the guest wing, was built between 1883 and 1897 and moved onto this lot at some point between 1926 and 1945. The Kitchen Building dates from 1926, and Sabae City records a tradition that it was newly built when the Ryotei Building was moved here. The storehouse also belongs to the early Showa years.

The front gate carries no date. Sabae City, judging from the weathering of its timbers, attributes it to the year Tenguro opened for business, 1951. The Ryotei Building was worked on again in 1966.

From the Kitchen Building's construction to the opening is a span of 25 years. How the buildings were used in that interval is not recorded in the sources that could be found.

Four Registrations, Two Criteria

The four were registered on the same day under consecutive numbers: 18-0139 for the Ryotei Building, 18-0140 for the Kitchen Building, 18-0141 for the storehouse and 18-0142 for the front gate. They split between two criteria. Only the Ryotei Building was listed for design that sets a standard; the other three were listed for their contribution to the historic landscape.

The Ryotei Building earned its criterion through its banquet plan, a large hall upstairs and Zashiki rooms with anterooms below, and through ornament of the kind a restaurant uses to announce itself, including red walls and fan-shaped Shitaji-mado windows. The kitchen, storehouse and gate were valued for the way they hold the street front and the setting together.

Sabae City describes the Ryotei Building and the Kitchen Building as rare examples of restaurant architecture within Fukui Prefecture. The guest wing and the kitchen both survive in the roles they were built for, on one site, and that is the reason to look at the four as a set.

From the Street Inward

The Restaurant Tenguro site meets the road along its eastern edge. The building standing toward the north end of that frontage is the Kitchen Building, its front sealed in black plaster with a projecting lattice on the ground floor, in the manner of a town house. A board fence runs south from it, and the opening in that fence is the front gate.

The Ryotei Building stands a little back from the road, with the Kitchen Building attached directly to its north side. Its rooms face not the street but a garden in the southwest corner of the lot. The storehouse is at the northwest corner, the point farthest from the road.

The gate does not line up with the entrance of the Ryotei Building. According to the Agency, setting the gate slightly off that axis gives the approach from gate to door some variety.

The board fence on either side of the gate has been repaired in recent years, but its small roof, like the gate's, is laid with tiles of Shakudani stone, a tuff quarried in Fukui. Sabae City sees gate, fence, kitchen front and the trees of the forecourt working together as one streetscape.

Visiting and Getting There

None of the buildings at Restaurant Tenguro is open inside to visitors; Sabae City's pages for the Ryotei Building, Kitchen Building and storehouse each say so. What can be seen is the exterior from the road, which in practice means the Kitchen Building front and the gate.

No municipal or official source confirming current opening days or reservations could be found. Anyone hoping to enter as a diner should contact the restaurant in advance. The ground inside the gate is private, so please do not go in without permission.

No guidance on photography was found either. When photographing from the road, pick a spot that keeps clear of people and vehicles going in and out.

The nearest station is Sabae on the Hapi-Line Fukui, about a 7-minute walk to the northwest. Nishi-Sabae Station on the Fukui Railway Fukubu Line is also about 7 minutes away on foot, heading southeast. Both times are estimates traced along the streets on a map.