Former Kitaokada Family Residence Annex

What Is the Former Kitaokada Family Residence Annex?

The Former Kitaokada Family Residence Annex (旧北岡田家住宅離れ, Kyū Kitaokada-ke Jūtaku Hanare) is a single-storey timber reception wing built in the early Meiji period (1868 to 1882) in Aiba, Ono Town, Ibi District, Gifu Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on November 2, 2018. It adjoins the west side of the Main House and has a building area of 90 square meters.

Of the six registered buildings on the estate, the Annex is the oldest. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it the only structure on the property that predates the Nōbi earthquake of 1891, which caused heavy damage across western Gifu. The Main House, the storehouses and the barns were all built after the quake, so the Annex alone shows what the compound looked like before it.

Registered as a Model of Design

The Kitaokada Annex holds registration number 21-0265, and its registration criterion sets it apart. The other five buildings listed that day qualified for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Annex was registered instead as a model of form and design.

The agency's description calls the building elegant and neatly composed. In other words, it was the quality of its rooms, not its size or its place in the streetscape, that earned the listing.

A Tea Room and Two Reception Rooms

The Former Kitaokada Family Residence Annex has a gabled roof of Sangawara-buki pan tiles running east to west, with lean-to eaves on the west, south and north. At the east end, where it meets the Main House, is a four-and-a-half-mat Chashitsu tea room. Two rooms continue westward from there.

The westernmost room is a formal Zashiki with a deep Tsukeshoin, the built-in writing desk set into a window bay. An open wooden-floored strip runs along its south side, so the room looks straight out onto the garden.

Ono Town explains that the garden wraps around the south, west and north sides of the Annex before reaching the covered corridor, which leaves the building surrounded by planting on three sides.

Postwar Alterations

The Kitaokada Annex was altered in 1949 and again in 1960. The agency's database gives only the years, not the scope of the work, so it is fairest to see the building as an early Meiji frame with postwar changes layered on it.

How to See the Kitaokada Annex

The Former Kitaokada Family Residence Annex stands well inside the walls and cannot be seen from the lane. On Ono Town's opening days you can walk the garden and view its south and west faces.

Ono Town lists the open areas as "the ground floor of the Main House, the garden and other areas," and does not mention the Annex rooms. If you hope to see the tea room or the writing alcove up close, ask the Ono Akebono Museum (0585-36-1888) before your visit.