Yabashi Family Residence Shoin (Kootei)

Reception Rooms West of the Main House

The Yabashi Family Residence Shoin (Kootei) (矢橋家住宅書院（紅於亭）, Yabashi-ke Jūtaku Shoin) is a reception wing of the Kaei era (1848 to 1854) on the Yabashi estate beside the old Nakasendō highway in Akasaka, Ogaki City, Gifu Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 1997. Its name, Kōotei, is also romanized Kootei.

A shoin in a merchant house is the formal part of the home, where guests were received. This one adjoins the Main House on its west side and is built around a pair of connected Zashiki rooms. At its northeast corner is a formal entrance with a Shikidai step, which leads straight to the Front Gate. It is a single-storey timber building with a tiled roof and a footprint of 84 square metres, and like the Retirement House it carries its roof in two tiers.

The arrangement let guests come in by the Front Gate and step up into the reception rooms without passing through the family's living quarters. The two characters of the name, meaning crimson and surpassing, bring to mind a line by the Tang poet Du Mu about frost-touched maple leaves redder than spring flowers, though no published source we found records how the name was chosen.

Craftsmanship in the Sukiya Spirit

The Yabashi Family Residence Shoin was registered, together with the Retirement House, as a building that would be difficult to reproduce. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to the details of the entrance:

• a shikidai step finished in black lime plaster
• an earthen Doma floor scored with joint lines to imitate square tiles laid on the diagonal
• a dado of woven ajiro panelling

The Agency sees in all three a level of skill akin to Sukiya-zukuri, the refined, deliberately informal style developed for tea houses. The diagonal tile pattern, called shihan-jiki, is normally made with separate square pavers set at 45 degrees; here it is drawn into a continuous floor. Ajiro is a weave of thin shaved strips, and used on a wall it turns handwork into surface texture.

Putting the most effort into the guest entrance tells you what the Shoin was for: this was the face the Yabashi family showed to visitors.

Seeing the Shoin in Context

The Yabashi Family Residence Shoin sits behind the Front Gate and its walls, on the west side of the Main House. The details the Agency describes, the plaster step, the scored floor and the woven dado, are all inside and cannot be seen from the street.

What you can grasp from outside is the plan. Standing on the old highway facing the Front Gate, you are looking toward the guests' entrance, with the reception wing waiting behind it. The estate front offers two doors, one for the household through the Main House and one for guests through the gate to the Shoin, and knowing that makes the street elevation make sense.

Visiting Kōotei

The Yabashi Family Residence Shoin (Kootei) is not open to the public, and because it stands behind the gate and walls it is hard to see from the street at all.

Please do not look through the gate or enter the grounds. There is no admission charge or booking system.