Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building

What the Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building Is

The Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building (太田家住宅茶室棟, Ōta-ke Jūtaku Chashitsu-tō) is an early Showa-era Chashitsu tea pavilion, built between 1926 and 1945, on 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 sangawara pantiles and a ridge running east to west. The footprint is 71 square metres. The Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building sits between the main house and the annex at the north end of the lot, and covered corridors link it to both.

There are two rooms: a 6-mat room and, on the north side, a 4.5-mat tea room. In the sequence of the estate, the tea room building marks the midpoint between the street-front house and the more private rooms at the back.

Why the Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building Was Registered

The Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs praises it as a fine piece of tea architecture that helps create an atmospheric garden setting. You cannot see it from the highway; its value lies in the way it works with the main house, the annex, and the garden to shape the inner landscape of the estate.

The official record also notes the light touch of the lean-to eaves, or Geya, that wrap around the Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building. That second, lower roof line below the main hipped roof makes a one-storey building sit low and wide toward the garden.

What to Look For

Two Rooms in the Sukiya Manner

Both rooms of the Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building are designed in a Sukiya-zukuri spirit, the relaxed, rustic-refined idiom of tea architecture, and both have a Tokonoma alcove on the west wall, so the two rooms line up with their alcoves facing the same way.

A Woven Ceiling and a Sloping One

The 4.5-mat tea room has an ajiro ceiling of woven thin wood strips, but at the east end the ceiling tilts to follow the roof, a treatment known as kakekomi. Switching between a flat woven ceiling and a sloping section within one small room is a familiar tea-room device, and it makes a tight space feel deeper.

Linked by Corridors

The Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building is not a free-standing hut. Covered corridors join it to both the main house and the annex, so on a rainy day you could walk from the house to the tea room and on to the annex while looking out over the garden.

Visiting the Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building

The Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building stands deep inside the Ota family estate, between the main house and the annex. The interior was not open to the public as of September 2026.

Because it does not face a road, the Ota Family Residence Tea Room Building is essentially hidden from both the old highway and the lane to the north. The official record and its photographs are the practical way to get to know the rooms and ceilings. Please do not try to look over the walls for a glimpse.