Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) New Zashiki

A parlour at the south end of the row

The Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) New Zashiki (小見家住宅（水村園）新座敷, Komi-ke Jūtaku Shinzashiki) is a zashiki-gura, a fire-resistant storehouse built to hold a living room, completed in 1906 on the grounds of the Mizumuraen tea shop in Honmachi, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 4, 2000.

From outside it passes for an ordinary storehouse: thick earthen walls, a tiled roof, a single storey and 22 square metres of floor. Inside, according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, is a Zashiki of about 10 Tatami mats, and family tradition holds that this was where the shop's first master lived out his retirement.

The New Zashiki marks the southern tip of the line of five storehouses that runs up the west side of the lot. The Kimono Storehouse abuts its north gable; across a narrow alley to the east stands the brick Bathhouse.

Why it was registered

The Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) New Zashiki was registered as a building that would not be easy to reproduce, under registration No. 10-0044, the first of the eight consecutive numbers the property received that day.

Two things earn it that place. The first is fire. The Agency describes the storehouse row as the household's firewall and the New Zashiki as its southern end. By wrapping a living room in Dozo-zukuri construction, the family turned the room itself into part of its defence against the town fires every merchant feared.

The second is what the building says about how the family lived. If the New Zashiki really was the founder's retirement room, that role later moved: in 1927 a separate 2-storey timber Retirement House went up in the north-east corner of the lot. Read side by side, the two buildings trace a shift from a room built into the storehouse line to a house of its own.

The name itself hints at an older parlour that this "new" one replaced, though the Agency's notes say nothing about it.

What to look for

The pleasure of the New Zashiki lies in the gap between what it looks like and what it was for. Nothing outside suggests a tatami room; the walls are those of a building meant to shrug off sparks.

Then look at its height. Of the five storehouses on the west side, the New Zashiki is the only single-storey one; the other four all rise to 2 storeys.

From this low start the roofs climb northward. The Kimono Storehouse next door carries the second-highest ridge in the row and the New Storehouse the highest. The rhythm of tiles that the shop invites visitors to admire from the neighbouring lot begins with this first, low step.

Visiting

The Komi Family Residence (Mizumuraen) New Zashiki stands behind a working tea shop on private property, and its interior is not open to the public. It has long served as a living space; anyone hoping to see it up close or to photograph it should ask at the shop.

If you are shown into the lot, stand in the alley and face east. Opposite the earthen walls of the New Zashiki rise the brick walls of the Bathhouse: two ways of keeping fire out, one of clay and plaster, one of fired brick, a few paces apart.