Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) Bathhouse

A bathhouse grown out of a firewall

The Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) Bathhouse (小見家住宅（水村園）湯殿, Komi-ke Jūtaku Yudono) is a single-storey brick bathhouse built in the mid-Taisho era at the Mizumuraen tea shop in Honmachi, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 4, 2000.

At 12 square metres it is the smallest of the eight registered buildings. It stands on the east edge of the lot, facing the New Zashiki across the alley, and its construction is unusual. From the brick firewall that doubles as the boundary with the neighbours, three brick walls, each 1 Ken long, run out westward to divide a bath, a boiler room and a toilet. Over them sits a hipped Yosemune-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki tiles.

In other words, the Bathhouse uses the existing firewall as its spine and grows its rooms out of it, more a set of services attached to the wall than a free-standing building.

Why it was registered

The Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) Bathhouse carries registration No. 10-0049 and was listed as a building that would not be easy to reproduce. It is classed as a domestic building.

What caught the Agency for Cultural Affairs' eye is the bricklaying. The Agency notes that, although this is only a utility building, the bricks were laid in Flemish bond, a sign of careful work. In Flemish bond each course alternates the long face of a brick, the stretcher, with its short end, the header, producing a regular chequer of long and short across the wall.

According to the shop, the brick buildings on the east side use different bonds: Flemish for the Bathhouse, English bond for the Brick Storehouse. The more painstaking pattern went into a small building for bathing and a toilet.

The plan tells its own story. A separate boiler room shows that the equipment for heating bath water was kept apart from the bath itself.

What to look for

Start with the face of the Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) Bathhouse's walls. The alternating stretchers and headers of Flemish bond are easy to pick out at close range.

Then compare the wall of the Brick Storehouse on the same side of the lot. If the shop's account holds, it is laid in English bond, with whole courses of stretchers and whole courses of headers taking turns, and the same material reads quite differently.

Across the alley is the New Zashiki. A clay-and-plaster parlour and a brick bathhouse facing each other sum up, in one short passage, two ways of keeping fire at bay.

Visiting

The Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) Bathhouse is a private building behind a working tea shop and is not open to the public. It was built for bathing and a toilet; if you hope to see or photograph it, always ask the shop first.

If you are invited in, get close to the brickwork. The Flemish-bond pattern is easier to read from a step or two away than from across the courtyard.