Kurakazu Family Residence Annex

What Is the Kurakazu Family Residence Annex?

The Kurakazu Family Residence Annex (倉員家住宅離れ, Kurakazu-ke Jūtaku Hanare) is a single-storey annex built in 1909 in Kitakawauchi, Joyo-machi, Yame City, Fukuoka Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2018.

The Kurakazu Family Residence Annex sits at the back of the compound, at its north end, and faces south like the main house. It covers 97 m². It is the newest of the four registered buildings, put up 24 years after the main house, and was remodeled in 1988.

Why the Kurakazu Family Residence Annex Was Registered

The Kurakazu Family Residence Annex was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 2, 2018, for its contribution to the historic landscape, under registration number 40-0156.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it an ancillary building that conveys part of the everyday life of a prosperous farming family. In the last years of the Meiji era, the Kurakazu household added this single-storey wing, complete with a formal reception room, behind its main house.

What to Look for at the Kurakazu Family Residence Annex

The most unusual feature of the Kurakazu Family Residence Annex is underneath it. An Ishigaki stone wall runs along the back of the site, and the annex's floor framing is carried out beyond the top of that wall. By cantilevering the floor structure past the edge of the stonework, the builders created a generous open space under the building, apparently to bring the annex right up to the edge of the lot.

The roof is an Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof in Sangawara-buki pantiles. The western half of the front carries a Tsunoya, a projecting wing that links the annex to the main house. Despite its name, the annex is not a free-standing building but part of one continuous roofed structure with the house.

Inside, three rooms run in a line, with a Zashiki reception room at the east end. The official description calls the annex a single-storey Dozo-zukuri building, a timber frame sealed in thick earthen plaster walls, while the database's structure field simply says wood. The two are not in conflict, since dozo-zukuri is a way of building in wood, but the published sources do not say how much of the annex is built this way.

Visiting the Kurakazu Family Residence Annex

The Kurakazu Family Residence Annex stands on private residential land and is not open to the public. Because it sits at the back of the lot behind the main house, how much of it can be seen from the road has not been confirmed. Please view it only from outside the property. Directions are on the page for the Kurakazu Family Residence.