Wada Family Residence Main House

About the Wada Family Residence Main House

The Wada Family Residence Main House (和田家住宅主屋, Wada-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey wooden house in Hachimancho, Kasamatsu Town, Gifu Prefecture, built in the early Showa period between 1926 and 1945 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 28, 2017.

It has a tiled roof and a building area of 194 square meters. The house faces east toward the street, where a main entrance and a secondary entrance sit side by side. A storehouse and a gate and wall on the same lot were registered on the same day, and the Wada main house is the centre of the group.

Why It Was Registered: A Model of Design

Of the three Wada properties, the storehouse and the gate and wall were registered for what they add to the streetscape. The Wada Family Residence Main House alone was registered under a different criterion: as a building that serves as a model of design. The judgement rests on the quality of the house itself.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs sums the Wada main house up as a carefully finished residence. Kasamatsu Town adds that the owner hired a carpenter from Kyoto and paid for good timber, and that the building has been changed very little, inside or out.

The Plan: Family Rooms and Guest Rooms

On the ground floor, a central corridor (naka-rōka) runs east to west and divides the Wada Family Residence Main House in two. The family's living rooms line the sunny south side, and a suite of three rooms for receiving guests lines the north.

Split the house this way and give it two front doors, and the traffic of visitors and household is kept apart. The secondary entrance was probably for everyday comings and goings, though no record describing how the two were used has been found.

What to Look For: Ceiling, Tokonoma and Western Room

Among the guest rooms, the Buddhist altar room has a coffered ceiling (Gō-tenjō) in the fukiyose manner. Instead of spacing the ribs evenly, the carpenter set them in close pairs, which doubles the lines overhead and gives the grid a beat.

The Zashiki at the far west end has a fine alcove arrangement around its Tokonoma. Being the room furthest from the entrance, it was most likely the formal room of the Wada main house.

Upstairs is a Western-style room with stained glass in its windows and a neatly finished plaster ceiling. Kasamatsu Town calls it a proper Western room. Setting one such room inside an otherwise Japanese house was a common choice for well-off households of the early Showa years, and this one survives with little change.

Visiting the Main House

The Wada Family Residence Main House is a private home, and its interior is not open to the public. The altar-room ceiling and the upstairs Western room cannot be seen in person.

From the street you can see the east front of the Wada main house over the gate and wall. For the plan and the interiors, the photographs and descriptions on the Agency's national database and on Cultural Heritage Online are the best guide.