Omoteya-zukuri

What omoteya-zukuri means

Omoteya-zukuri is a townhouse form in which a shop block faces the street and a separate residential block stands behind it, with an entrance area and a courtyard between, the two joined together. The street block is the omoteya, and the rear block is the residential or main block. Separating trade and domestic life into different blocks is the essence of the form.

An ordinary townhouse puts the shop at the front and living rooms at the back of a single block, linked by an earth-floored passage. In omoteya-zukuri an entrance room and courtyard lie between the two blocks, and the residential block becomes a quieter space set back from the street. The form needs a deep plot and is found in the larger merchant houses of Kyoto and Omi.

The omoteya is usually two storeys high, with projecting lattices or plastered slit windows on the street front. The residential block is organised around reception rooms and takes light and air from the courtyard.

Reading the records and the house

Records name the form and describe the relation of the blocks. The east main house of the former Ishibashi family in Hikone, Shiga, has a two-storey omoteya facing south onto the street, with the residential part behind an entrance and courtyard, and projecting lattices across the front of the omoteya with an earth floor at its east end; the record calls it one of the few large omoteya-zukuri townhouses in the prefecture. The main house of the Ueda family in Kyoto, a former white-silk wholesaler, has its entrance between a two-storey omoteya and the residential block, and a ground-floor lattice front on a base of large granite slabs.

On site, check whether a separate roof appears some distance behind the street block. A courtyard between the roof of the omoteya and that of the rear block indicates the form. Often only the omoteya can be seen from the street, so site plans and records help confirm the rear block.