Sanada Family Residence Front Gate

A 1928 Gate on the Street

The Sanada Family Residence Front Gate (眞田家住宅表門, Sanada-ke Jūtaku Omotemon) is a Yakuimon-style gate built in 1928 at the eastern end of the Sanada compound's north frontage in Higashimachi, Mihara City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building) on 4 February 2021. With the main house beside it, it is one of the few parts of the compound you can see from the old Sanyo Road.

The gate carries a gabled roof in copper and spans a single bay, with a frontage of 2.4 meters. Square posts support a heavy tie beam, or kabuki. Inserted brackets (sashi-hijiki) and bearing blocks project from the posts and carry a lower and an upper beam, which in turn hold the eave purlins. At the ridge, a frog-leg strut, or Kaerumata, supports the ridge beam, and the eaves use a single tier of widely spaced Taruki rafters. The doors hang between the posts, and above them sits an Osa-ranma, a transom of fine vertical slats like the teeth of a weaver's reed.

Why It Was Registered

Five of the six Sanada buildings were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Sanada Family Residence Front Gate is the exception: it was registered as a model of design. It is a small structure, but its bracketing, strut and transom are assembled with the vocabulary of temple and shrine carpentry, and that care is what the listing recognizes.

The gate was built in 1928 and moved in 2002. Where it originally stood, and why it was relocated, are not recorded in the national database. The main house was also remodelled in 2002, so it was a year of work on the street side of the compound. The database gives no owner for the gate.

Look Up

Take in the Sanada Family Residence Front Gate from a few steps back, then stand beneath it and look up. The inserted brackets reach forward and back from the tie beam and, through their blocks, hold two beams stacked one above the other. The way those beams carry the eaves outward reads better from below and to one side than from straight ahead.

Under the ridge, the frog-leg strut carries the ridge beam. The name comes from its splayed shape, like the legs of a crouching frog, and here it is neatly fitted into the gable of a very small gate. The slatted transom is best in afternoon light, when the thin shadows fall across the doors.

The single tier of rafters, set wide apart, keeps the gate light. Temple gates often double their rafters; this one stays domestic and quietly refined.

Visiting

Because the Sanada Family Residence Front Gate stands on the old Sanyo Road, its exterior can be seen from the street. The compound is private, and you cannot pass through the gate; we found no public opening as of September 2026. Stopping to look up is fine, but please keep to the edge of the road so as not to block anyone coming or going.

We found no official guidance on photography. Directions and general visiting notes are on the Sanada Family Residence page.