Ota Family Residence Annex

What the Ota Family Residence Annex Is

The Ota Family Residence Annex (太田家住宅離れ, Ōta-ke Jūtaku Hanare) is an early Showa-era reception wing, built between 1926 and 1945, in the northwest corner of the Ota family estate in Saijo-Okamachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and it was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 4 February 2021.

It is a single-storey timber building with a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof in red pantiles, wrapped by a lower lean-to roof, and its ridge runs east to west. The footprint is 95 square metres. A covered corridor connects the Ota Family Residence Annex to the tea room building.

Inside are two rooms: a broad Zashiki reception room to the east and an anteroom to the west. Placed at the very back of the estate, the Ota Family Residence Annex appears to have been built as the formal room for receiving guests.

Why the Ota Family Residence Annex Was Registered

The Ota Family Residence Annex was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a neatly composed annex built from good timber inside and out. It does not rely on showy ornament. Its quality is in the materials and the precision of the joinery, which makes the Ota Family Residence Annex a good gauge of well-made domestic architecture in the early Showa era.

Its relationship with the garden matters just as much. Together with the tea room building, it frames the inner garden and creates a quiet enclave that you would never guess at from the highway.

What to Look For

A South Front Open to the Garden

The south side of the Ota Family Residence Annex is built to open up toward the garden, fitted with glazed sliding doors. You could sit in the reception room and take in the garden directly, and the generous use of glass is typical of houses from the period.

A Full Set of Alcove Fittings

The east reception room has a large Tokonoma alcove, flanked on one side by Tokowaki shelving and on the other by a built-in writing bay, or shoin. That arrangement is the formal way to dress a Japanese reception room, and it marks the Ota Family Residence Annex as one of the most important rooms on the estate.

A Doubled Roofline

Below the red hipped roof, a lean-to roof runs all the way around the building. The tea room building shares the same doubled roofline, so the buildings at the back of the estate match each other from the outside as well.

Visiting the Ota Family Residence Annex

The Ota Family Residence Annex stands in the northwest corner of the Ota family estate, and the interior was not open to the public as of September 2026.

The building faces the garden, not the street, so its main front cannot be seen from any road. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database includes an exterior photograph taken from the north, which is the best way to see the Ota Family Residence Annex. If you walk around the estate, please do not look over the walls.