Amano Family Residence Main Gate

About the Amano Family Residence Main Gate

The Amano Family Residence Main Gate (天野家住宅正門, Amano-ke Jūtaku Seimon) is a granite gateway built in 1927 on the Amano family estate in Mimigai, Odaka Ward, Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018.

The Amano Family Residence Main Gate consists of two granite pillars 3 m high, standing 3.2 m apart, with a smaller side gate on each flank. It faces south at the top of a ramp cut into the middle of the estate's south side.

Why the Main Gate Matters

The Amano Family Residence Main Gate was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for its contribution to the historic landscape, under registration number 07-0206.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs praises its balanced proportions and calls it the core of the estate's formal front. The two storehouses on either side and the walls running away from it are all arranged around this gate.

The Amano Main Gate went up in 1927, the same year as the concrete walls with their side and rear gates and the alteration of the main house, and a year after the Rice Storehouse of 1926. It was the centrepiece of that two-year rebuilding of the estate's front.

What to Look For at the Amano Main Gate

No roof or door frame is recorded for the Amano Family Residence Main Gate. The gate is its two granite pillars. Where a timber gate would rely on a roof and beams, here the stone posts themselves carry the design.

Each pillar is capped with a four-sided pyramid wrapped in copper sheet, so a metal point sits on grey granite.

On either side is a side gate in the form of a torii, the two-post, cross-beamed frame familiar from shrine entrances. One on each side, the pair of side gates gives the Amano Family Residence Main Gate a symmetrical front.

The ground inside and outside the gate is paved with stone, so the ramp underfoot turns to stone as it reaches the gate.

Seeing the Amano Family Residence Main Gate

The Amano Family Residence Main Gate is the gate of a private home and cannot be passed through. It stands at the end of a ramp that appears to be part of the property; please do not walk up it.

How much of the gate can be seen from outside has not been checked on site. Photographs should be taken from the public road only.