Former Koketsu Family Residence (Kominka Aiseki) Tea Room

Former Koketsu Family Residence Tea Room

The Former Koketsu Family Residence (Kominka Aiseki) Tea Room (旧纐纈家住宅（古民家あいせき）茶室) in Honmachi 7-chome, Seki City, Gifu Prefecture, is a single-storey tea room wing built in 1927, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on August 6, 2025 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a timber building of 1 storey with tiled and copper roofs and a building area of 32 square metres, altered in 2021. Its registration number is 21-0308.

It stands behind the shop and main house on Honmachi-dori and is reached by a covered corridor from the veranda on the north side of that house (Agency for Cultural Affairs). It was added in the Showa era, decades after the mid-Meiji house.

A Four-Mat Tea Room and a Guest Room

The Koketsu tea room is a single-storey wing under a gabled roof of pantiles. On the west is a four-mat room for tea, the Chashitsu proper, and on the east a guest room about the size of four and a half mats (Agency for Cultural Affairs). An inner veranda, or Uchien, runs along the south of the guest room, and on the west are a service entrance for the host and a Mizuya for preparing tea.

The corridor from the house has a single-pitch roof of copper sheet and is left open on its courtyard side, with no walls or sliding doors (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The roofing changes from tile to copper where the corridor meets the tea room.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the Former Koketsu Family Residence (Kominka Aiseki) Tea Room as a registered tangible cultural property that serves as a model of design, describing it as carefully crafted modern Japanese-style architecture. Gifu Prefecture also presents it as a single-storey tea room linked by a corridor and notes the care taken over its joinery.

The well in the courtyard is said to have been used for this tea room alone (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Tradition thus links the tea room and the courtyard well.

What to Look For

Walk the corridor slowly and look toward the courtyard. Because the corridor is open on that side, the courtyard and its well come into view as you walk to the tea room.

Inside the Koketsu tea room, compare the four-mat tea room with the larger guest room next to it. The Gifu Shimbun reported in 2022 with a photograph of the courtyard seen from the tea room.

Visiting

The Former Koketsu Family Residence (Kominka Aiseki) Tea Room is listed by Seki City as one of the ground-floor rooms of Kominka Aiseki and can be used free of charge during opening hours.

Private bookings require an application and cost 100 yen an hour, tripled when admission is charged or the use is commercial (Seki City). Food and drink are allowed in the building, but open flames are not. No official guidance on photography was found, so ask the staff before taking pictures.