Tsumairi

What tsumairi means

Tsumairi describes an entrance placed on the end wall of a building, at right angles to the ridge of the roof. That end wall is where the triangular gable appears in Kirizuma-zukuri and Irimoya-zukuri.

The National Cultural Properties Database records it directly after the roof shape. The main hall of Hazu Shrine in Aichi Prefecture is entered as a single-bay shrine, irimoya-zukuri, tsumairi, with a front canopy and a cypress-bark roof. The roof is hipped and gabled; the door is on the gable end.

Houses and storehouses use the arrangement too. The Sato Residence new storehouse in Iwate Prefecture, built in 1922, is described as gabled, entered from the gable end, two storeys, built in Dozo-zukuri, its date known from a ridge tablet.

This is a separate question from the shape of the roof. A gabled building may be entered from either end, and so may a hip-and-gable one, while a fully hipped roof has no gable to enter through and the term does not arise. Records list roof shape and entrance orientation side by side because the two vary independently.

The paired term

The opposite arrangement is Hirairi, where the entrance sits on the long side beneath the run of the eaves. Two buildings with identical roofs can differ entirely in how they meet the street, depending on which face carries the door.

On site, find the ridge first. Look at the highest line of the roof and see which way it runs; if the entrance is on a face at right angles to that line, the building is entered from the gable end, and the triangular wall faces you as you go in.

The width available at the front is limited by the depth of the roof, so this arrangement makes a wide frontage awkward. Buildings that want a long face towards the street tend to be entered from the eaves side instead, while free-standing shrine halls and storehouses use the gable end freely.