Sakai Family Residence Shinzashiki

About the Sakai Family Residence Shinzashiki

The Sakai Family Residence Shinzashiki (酒井家住宅新座敷, Sakai-ke Jūtaku Shinzashiki, "new reception wing") is a single-storey timber guest wing built around 1951 in Rakuma, Maruoka-cho, Sakai City, Fukui Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2025.

The Sakai Family Residence Shinzashiki was built as a detached suite for receiving honoured guests. A covered corridor links it to the south side of the Western-style house, and it has a building area of 116 m². Sakai City's list dates it to the early Shōwa era, but we follow the Agency for Cultural Affairs' date of around 1951.

Rooms Made for Hospitality

The Shinzashiki was registered as a model of form. The Agency describes it as a neat yet richly finished reception wing.

That a family built such an elaborate guest wing only a few years after the war says much about the weight it gave to entertaining visitors. Rather than receive guests in the main house, the household gave hospitality a building of its own.

Linked Rooms, a Tea Room and a Raised Coffered Ceiling

Outside, the Sakai Family Residence Shinzashiki is a single-storey Irimoya-zukuri building with a Sangawara-buki pantile roof and a ridge running east to west.

Inside, a pair of linked reception rooms occupies the east side, a Chashitsu tea room sits in the northwest corner and the washrooms and service areas are in the southwest. Guests and staff thus moved through opposite ends of the building.

The main room has a full set of display features: a Tokonoma alcove, a biwadoko (a small raised platform beside the alcove, a sign of high status), shelves and a Tsukeshoin writing bay. Overhead is an oriage kogumi gōtenjō, a coffered ceiling raised at its edges and filled with a fine grid, which marks the room's rank as clearly as the alcove does.

Verandas wrap the north and east sides, so the rooms open onto the garden. The combination of a lavish alcove and a garden view is what gives the Shinzashiki its grace.

Seeing the Sakai Family Residence Shinzashiki

The Shinzashiki is part of a private home and its interior is not open to the public (checked October 2026). It lies deep within the plot, so little if any of it is likely to be visible from outside.

Please do not enter the grounds. The wider estate is described on the Sakai Family Residence (Maruoka) page.