Yokooji Family Residence (Shingu, Kasuya, Fukuoka)

The Thousand-Year House

The Yokooji Family Residence (横大路家住宅, Yokoōji-ke Jūtaku), known throughout the district as Sennen-ya (千年家, the thousand-year house), is a mid-Edo-period farmhouse at Kofu in Shingu Town, Kasuya District, Fukuoka Prefecture, designated an Important Cultural Property on 28 January 1977 under designation number 02022.

Before planning a visit, one thing needs saying at the outset: the house is currently closed. Shingu Town has suspended interior admission for an unspecified period. The exterior may still be viewed, and the approach and the roof are the greater part of what makes the building worth the journey, but anyone hoping to stand in the earth-floored doma should confirm the situation with the town's history museum before setting out.

What survives is a thatched farmhouse of the type called magariya, bent in plan into an L. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the main range at 16.0 metres by 8.0 metres, with a projecting wing on the east side measuring 10.7 by 9.1 metres, hipped roof, thatch throughout, and tiled pent roofs on all four sides. It is entered on the register as a single building in the category of pre-modern folk dwellings, with a date given as the middle Edo period and a bracketed range of 1661 to 1750. Shingu Town's own account narrows this to the mid-seventeenth century.

That date is what makes the building matter nationally. The Agency's assessment concludes that it is likely the oldest surviving farmhouse in the Kyushu region. No document fixes the year of construction, so the judgement rests on the timber itself.

How Carpentry Establishes a Date

Read the official description closely and it is almost entirely about framing. Along the ketayuki axis (桁行), the long axis of the building, posts are set at every one-ken interval. Across the harima axis (梁間), the depth, the spacing between posts is much wider. That combination, together with the way the individual members are finished, is what the Agency cites as evidence of early construction.

The reasoning is worth unpacking for anyone unfamiliar with how Japanese vernacular buildings are dated. Closely spaced posts along the long axis indicate a frame that has not yet learned to span. As carpentry technique advanced through the Edo period, builders grew confident about carrying loads on fewer, larger members, and post intervals widened accordingly. A house that still stands its posts at every ken along one axis is working with an older structural logic. Surface finish supplies a second clue: adze marks, the degree of squaring, the tolerance of joints, all of which shift measurably across the centuries.

The Shape of the Plan

The building is a magariya, the L-shaped or bent-ridge farmhouse form found in several regions of Japan. Here the shorter arm holds a broad earth-floored work space and the longer arm the raised living rooms. Studies of Kyushu vernacular architecture describe the house as having originally taken the kudo-zukuri form characteristic of northern Kyushu, with a formal reception room, and as having been reduced and reworked into its present L-shaped hipped-and-thatched configuration during the Bunka and Bunsei eras in the early nineteenth century. These accounts also note that the ridge is finished with a semicircular bamboo device known locally as a tago. That reconstruction of the building's history comes from secondary architectural surveys rather than from the national record, and is best treated as the prevailing scholarly reading rather than as established fact.

Repairs took place between 2000 and 2002 after the fabric had deteriorated badly. Ownership now rests with Shingu Town, though older records list the property in private family hands, which reflects the transfer of a house that had been continuously occupied by the same lineage.

Saicho, the Fire and the Well

The name Sennen-ya carries a story, and the story is the reason the house has a following well beyond architectural circles.

According to tradition, Saicho, the monk who founded the Tendai school in Japan, returned from study in Tang China in 805 and came ashore in this area, going on to found Tokko-ji temple at Tachibanaguchi in what is now Shingu Town. In gratitude to the family that lodged and assisted him, he is said to have granted them the surname Yokooji together with three gifts: an image of Bishamonten, a sacred fire called the hori-no-hi, and a well known as the Iwai water. So long as the three were kept, the tradition holds, the line would not fail. The family has continued, and the house came to be called the thousand-year house.

None of this is documented in the way a designation record documents dimensions, and it should be read as local tradition rather than history. What is verifiable is the practice that grew from it. Each year on 13 April a service is held at which the Bishamonten image is unveiled, and that single day is the only occasion on which it can be seen.

The hearth fire has its own reported continuity. Accounts describe the kitchen fire being kept burning without interruption, partly as inheritance and partly for the practical reason that smoke through a thatched roof deters insects and preserves the timber. Regional reporting indicates the sacred fire itself has since been relocated to a hermitage in Dazaifu. Since the house is closed, this is not currently something a visitor can verify in person.

Getting There, and What You Can Actually See

Admission to the interior is suspended. Exterior viewing remains possible and there is no charge. Parking holds six vehicles including medium coaches and is free. Enquiries go to the Shingu Town History Museum, located in the Core Shingu complex, telephone 092-962-5511.

By bus, take the Marinkusu Airando line from in front of JR Shingu-Chuo Station or Nishitetsu Shingu Station and alight at the Sennen-ya stop. Alternatively, the Nishitetsu bus stop at Kofu Tarumaru is about fifteen minutes on foot.

From outside, the thatch is the thing. A roof of this size, hipped on all sides with tiled pent roofs running below, presents very differently from the tiled farmhouses that surround it, and the bend in the plan is legible from the approach. Photograph the exterior freely. Bear in mind that the site sits within a residential area, so keep to the public approach.

If you are already in the area, Tokko-ji at Tachibanaguchi connects directly to the tradition attached to the house, and the Shingu Town History Museum can supply current information on both. Ainoshima, the island off the coast reached by ferry from Shingu, makes a natural second half to the day.