What a naka-roka is
A naka-roka is a corridor running through the middle of a building with rooms to either side. Where the traditional plan moves from room to room along a veranda, this one enters each room from a corridor.
Records treat it as a modern feature. The Inaba Residence in Kyoto Prefecture, built in 1890, is described as the house of a merchant family established since the Edo period on a broad plot at the centre of the town, a large two-storey house by a local carpenter, Kirizuma-zukuri and pantiled, which the entry credits with a new departure in adopting a modern corridor plan while keeping the local tradition, and notes its full-height interior space.
That phrase about a new departure places the plan precisely: the frame stays traditional and only the arrangement of rooms is new.
The Suzuki Residence in Aichi Prefecture, from the early Showa period, is described as planned around such a corridor with reception rooms and kitchen arranged along it and an entrance wing projecting at an angle, combining a single-storey reception range of well-ordered design with a two-storey western-style wing, in a house showing the character of the new suburbs of prewar Nagoya.
Beyond the house
It also serves to divide a building. The bath hall at the Kanaguya annexe in Nagano Prefecture, built in 1929, is described as a single-storey timber building of 75 square metres, its corridor dividing the men's and women's baths north and south, with round columns, Kōryō, bracket blocks and scissor framing in the manner of a Buddhist hall.
The corridor also separates reception from family life. In a Machiya or a farmhouse the Toriniwa or the Doma carried the traffic; running a corridor across the raised floor allows movement without passing through rooms.
The plan spread with the suburbs. The Suzuki entry ties it to the new residential districts of the prewar period.
On site, read the plan. A single corridor crossing the middle of the building with rooms on both sides is this type, and the movement differs from a plan where a veranda merely wraps the outside.
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: Registered tangible cultural properties (structures)
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/toroku_yukei.html
- National Cultural Properties Database: Inaba Residence, combining local tradition with the modern central-corridor plan
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00003110
- National Cultural Properties Database: Kanaguya bath hall, its round columns and curved beams borrowing the manner of a Buddhist hall
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00009017
- National Cultural Properties Database: former Suganuma Residence, its southern half formerly an earthen floor entered by a great door
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00009180
Last verified: 2026.09.11