Abe Family Residence Main House

About the Abe Family Residence Main House

The Abe Family Residence Main House (阿部家住宅主屋, Abe-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey timber house built in 1953 at the centre of the Abe family estate in Kayaba, Sasagino, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2008.

It is the youngest of the estate's nine registered buildings. The Abe Family Residence Main House covers 156 m² under a tiled hip-and-gable roof whose ridge runs east to west. The entrance sits in the east gable end. A reception room projects at the south-east corner and the kitchen and service rooms at the north-west, so two opposite corners of the house carry rooms with quite different jobs.

A Post-War Replacement

The database entries for the two older guest wings on the estate say that both were once attached to the predecessor of the main house. An earlier family house therefore stood here, and the Meiji and Taisho wings were built onto it. The present house replaced it after the war. What the earlier house looked like, and when it came down, is not recorded in the published sources.

The Abe Family Residence Main House was registered as a model of design. A house of 1953 being judged alongside Meiji and Taisho reception rooms is unusual enough to be worth a second look.

Clay Walls Between Rooms

What the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out is how the rooms are divided. On both floors, the partitions between rooms are clay walls. In an older farmhouse the rooms were separated by sliding fusuma and could be thrown open into one large space; here each room is closed off.

The result is a set of rooms that can be used independently, and the agency describes the building as a house that puts everyday living first. It captures post-war Japan moving away from the house built around gatherings and towards one built around private rooms.

Along the south side of the ground floor runs a broad corridor one ken wide, about 1.8 metres, open to the garden. It links the southern rooms even though the walls keep them separate.

Seeing the Abe Family Residence Main House

The Abe Family Residence Main House is part of a private home and is not open to the public. Fukushima Prefecture's heritage list also states that interior photography is not permitted, so the building can only be seen from the road.

Because it stands in the middle of the plot, the house sits behind the silkworm and stone storehouses when seen from the street to the east. The tiled hip-and-gable roof and the entrance in the east gable are the parts to look for. Directions to the estate are on the Abe Family Residence page.