Katayama Family Residence Nagayamon Gate

A Gatehouse with a Silkworm Room

The Katayama Family Residence Nagayamon Gate (片山家住宅長屋門, Katayama-ke Jūtaku Nagayamon) is a nagayamon gatehouse of around 1873 in Nitta Tameikecho, Ota City, Gunma Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2004.

It stands at the centre of the southern edge of the Katayama homestead, the family seat of the old headmen of Tameike village. The single-storey wooden building has a tiled roof and covers 109 square metres. It went up at about the same time as the main house, and the two were clearly planned as a pair.

A nagayamon is a long building with a gateway through the middle and rooms or stores on either side, so the gate doubles as living or working space. The Katayama Family Residence Nagayamon Gate packs in two gateways, a store and a kaikoya, a room for rearing silkworms: a gatehouse shaped by a silk-farming household.

Why It Was Registered

The gatehouse received registration number 10-0113 in the 40th round of national registrations, dated 2004/2/17, for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs highlights the way its gateways are arranged to correspond with the entrance of the main house. Gate and house entrance were thought out together. Stretched across the front of the homestead, the long low building is also the face the headman's family showed to the village.

What to Look For

Ten bays long

The Nagayamon is 10 ken long and 3 ken deep, under a kirizuma-zukuri gable roof covered with sangawara-buki pan tiles. It is hirairi, entered on the long side parallel to the ridge, and it fills the middle of the property's southern boundary.

Two gateways and a silkworm room

There are two gateways. A store occupies the east end, and the kaikoya sits between the two openings. The westernmost gateway is normally kept shut.

The path to the earth-floored entrance of the main house presumably ran from the eastern gateway, the one in daily use. The main house also has a genkan, a formal entrance with a shikidai step that, according to Ota City, was opened only on special occasions. The usually closed west gateway may well have been the guests' gate that paired with that formal entrance. That would explain what the Agency means by gateways that correspond to the house entrance, though the records do not spell it out.

Boarded base, exposed timber above

The lower walls are clad in shitami-itabari clapboarding held by vertical battens, and the upper walls are shinkabe, plaster set between exposed posts. The eaves are built in the degeta-zukuri manner, with brackets carrying an outer beam so the roof projects deeply. Dark boards, pale walls and long eaves give the front a calm, solid look.

Visiting

The Katayama Family Residence Nagayamon Gate is part of a private home; its interior and the grounds beyond it are not open, and as of October 2026 we found no announcement of open days. Standing on the southern edge of the plot, its front may be visible from outside the property, though we have not confirmed this on site. Please do not walk through the gate, and respect the residents' privacy.

Photographs in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database show the exterior.