Munafuda

What a munafuda is

A munafuda is a wooden tablet placed at the ridge when a building is raised. It records the date, the patron and the carpenters, and it is one of the primary sources for a building's history.

Records cite it for dating. The new storehouse at the Sato Residence in Iwate Prefecture, built in 1922, is described as a two-storey building in Dozo-zukuri, Kirizuma-zukuri and entered at the gable end, its year of raising known from such a tablet.

Names often survive with the date. The Yoshida Residence in Niigata Prefecture, built in 1883, is described as a farmhouse showing its north gable to the highway, with its carpenter identified from the tablet. The Muramatsu Residence in Yamanashi Prefecture, built in 1865, names both a master carpenter and his deputy from the same source.

Sometimes the circumstances come with it. The Masujin main house and brewery in Niigata Prefecture, built in 1892, is described as known from its tablet to have been raised by a named master carpenter immediately after the great fire of that year. Date, carpenter and occasion all come from one board.

Designated with the building

Because the tablet cannot be separated from the building it documents, it is sometimes designated alongside it as Tsuketari. The main hall of Takasu Shrine in Fukuoka Prefecture, designated an Important Cultural Property on 25 September 2023, is a three-bay Nagare-zukuri hall roofed in Hiwadabuki, recorded as one structure with six such tablets designated with it.

The tablets keep their own Insū in that case. Six tablets are not folded into the single structure recorded for the building.

An Onigawara may also carry an inscribed date, but it dates the roof rather than the building, since roofs are replaced as their covering wears out. A ridge tablet records the raising of the frame. Which source a date comes from is worth establishing before quoting it.