What kagura-zukuri means
Kagura-zukuri is a two-storey timber structure built with separate posts for each floor, without through posts running continuously from the ground floor to the upper floor. Aichi Prefecture explains it as a structure that forms two storeys with storey-height posts only, without through posts, used for example when adding an upper floor to a single-storey house.
Ordinary two-storey timber houses have through posts, usually at the corners, tying the two floors together. In kagura-zukuri the upper frame sits on top of the lower, making it easy to add rooms above an existing single-storey house, though the connection between floors is weaker than with through posts. The form records the history of such additions in the structure itself.
Reading the records
The main house of the Suzuki family in Nagoya, Aichi, a single-storey house with a partial upper floor from the early Showa period, has a two-storey wing next to the reception wing with a Western room below and an independent Japanese room above built in kagura-zukuri. Aichi Prefecture describes it as a modern Japanese-style house with a central-corridor plan that still conveys the domestic life of its time despite alterations in 1952 and 1953.
Because the structure is hard to see from outside, articles should follow the record or local-government sources.
References
- 国登録有形文化財の登録について（鈴木家住宅主屋）｜愛知県
- https://www.pref.aichi.jp/uploaded/attachment/53816.pdf
- 鈴木家住宅主屋｜国指定文化財等データベース（文化庁）
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00010786
Last verified: 2026.09.27