Former Yamamoto Residence (Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation Hall) Tea House
There is no crawl entrance. That single absence tells you almost everything about the small building standing across the garden from the main house at Yuzen-cho in Nishinomiya.
Most Japanese tea houses are entered through a nijiriguchi, an opening so low that a guest must bend, kneel and shuffle through. Sen no Rikyu made it the standard in the sixteenth century, and the reasoning behind it is well known: rank is left outside along with the sword. This tea house has only a kijinguchi, a full-height doorway for guests of rank. That is a deliberate choice, and it points to a particular school.
The building is single-storey timber construction with a pantile roof and a building area of 17 square metres. Its ridge runs east to west under a hipped-and-gabled roof, with copper-sheeted eaves wrapping the north and west faces. Inside, a four-and-a-half mat tea room occupies the west end and a three-mat mizuya, the preparation space where utensils are washed and arranged, sits to the east. Walls inside and out are finished in juraku, a clay plaster named for the earth once dug near Hideyoshi's Jurakudai palace in Kyoto, prized for its warm sandy colour. The west wall opens as a wide floor-level aperture.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the building to about 1937, contemporary with the main house; the foundation's own chronology places the complex a year later.
Fumai's School, and Why It Is Rare Here
The tea house carries registration number 28-0295 on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties, entered on 5 December 2007 and notified on the nineteenth of that month, in the fifty-seventh round. The registration criterion is contribution to the historical landscape of the country.
Registration differs from designation in a way that visitors to Japan often miss. An Important Cultural Property is selected by the state for exceptional value and tightly controlled thereafter. Registration, introduced by the 1996 revision of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, was designed to catch the enormous body of modern buildings that were vanishing before anyone could assess them. Owners apply, keep using their buildings, and simply notify the authorities before changing the exterior. A 1930s tea house in a private garden is precisely the kind of thing the older system would have let disappear.
What gives this one its interest is its lineage. The plan follows the Fumai-ryu school, developed by Matsudaira Harusato, better known by his tea name Fumai, the daimyo of Matsue in present-day Shimane Prefecture and one of the great collector-practitioners of the Edo period. Fumai's tea rooms favour light and openness over the compressed intimacy of the Rikyu tradition, and the high entrance follows from that preference rather than contradicting it. Examples of the school are common enough around Matsue and scarce in the Kansai region, which makes this one a genuine outlier in a Hyogo garden.
The connection is not accidental. Okada Takao, who designed the whole property, was a scholar of tea architecture as well as a practising designer for the Mitsukoshi department store in Osaka; tea houses by his hand survive elsewhere in the region. The plum in the small garden by the main house's sitting room is said to have a link to Fumai himself, which suggests the original client, the Tottori mining magnate Kondo Juichiro, had reasons of his own for wanting a Matsue-style room.
Reading the Approach
The tea house faces north across the main garden, and the garden was built to be read two ways at once. Seen from the main house, it composes as a picture: a snow-viewing lantern, a stepping stone that divides the path, a pine as the principal tree, a dry pond, and the tea house closing the view. Walked, it becomes a roji, the approach garden that prepares a guest's mind for tea, and it can be walked by either of two routes from the house.
The stones are worth attention. Local accounts hold that they were carried from the river at Neu in Nichinan district of Tottori Prefecture, the mining country where Kondo made his money, and the shoe-removing stone in particular has an unusual shape. Garden historians have suggested the layout carries traces of the Izumo garden style, which would sit logically alongside a Fumai-school tea room; both traditions come from the same corner of the country.
Step inside and the argument for openness makes itself. Four and a half mats is a standard size, but the wide western aperture and the low copper eaves let daylight travel across the juraku walls rather than pooling in a corner. Compare the effect with a Rikyu-tradition room of identical area and the difference in mood is immediate. This is a room for a host who wanted to see his guests and his garden clearly.
The tea house is seen from outside and, depending on how the rooms are being used that day, sometimes from within, as part of a booked tour of the property. The foundation asks visitors to reserve by the previous day. Hours are 10:30 to 15:30 with last admission at 15:00; the house is closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays, and admission is 300 yen for adults, 150 yen for schoolchildren. The walk from Hankyu Shukugawa station takes about nine minutes, from Kurakuen-guchi about eight. Autumn light suits the room; so does the plum season, for reasons the garden makes plain.
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Q&A
- Why does this tea house have no crawl entrance?
- Because it follows the Fumai school, which favours bright, open rooms entered through a full-height kijinguchi. The low nijiriguchi belongs chiefly to the Rikyu tradition and its descendants, where the act of stooping carries symbolic weight.
- Who was Matsudaira Fumai?
- Matsudaira Harusato (1751–1818), lord of the Matsue domain, was among the most influential tea practitioners and collectors of the late Edo period. The school of tea associated with him takes his tea name, Fumai.
- Can I take part in a tea gathering here?
- The foundation runs cultural classes and hires out rooms, so tea events do take place, but they are separate from ordinary sightseeing visits. Ask when you make your booking; programmes change through the year.
- What is a mizuya used for?
- It is the host's preparation area, where utensils are stored, washed and laid out before and during a gathering. Here it occupies three mats at the eastern end of the building, directly beside the tea room.
- Is the tea house older than the house itself?
- No. Both belong to the same building campaign of the late 1930s, and the register gives roughly 1937 for the tea house. It was designed as part of the property rather than moved here from elsewhere.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Yamamoto Residence (Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation Hall) Tea House |
|---|---|
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Buildings), registration no. 28-0295 |
| Registration | Entered 5 December 2007; notified 19 December 2007 (57th round) |
| Criterion | Contributing to the historical landscape of the country |
| Date | c. 1937 per the Agency for Cultural Affairs register; the foundation's chronology gives 1938 for the property |
| Structure | Single-storey timber frame, pantile roof; building area 17 m² |
| Plan | 4.5-mat tea room (west) and 3-mat mizuya (east); kijinguchi entrance, no nijiriguchi |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Architect | Okada Takao (engineer, Osaka Mitsukoshi housing department) |
| School | Fumai-ryu, after Matsudaira Harusato of Matsue |
| Location | Yuzen-cho, Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture (register: Yuzen-cho 3; foundation: 1-24) |
| Owner | Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation |
| Access | 9 min walk from Hankyu Shukugawa; 8 min from Hankyu Kurakuen-guchi; 12 min from JR Sakura-Shukugawa |
| Visiting | 10:30–15:30 (last admission 15:00), advance booking required by the previous day; closed Sundays, Mondays and public holidays |
| Admission | Adults 300 yen; primary and junior high school students 150 yen |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Former Yamamoto Residence (Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation Hall) Tea House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00006718
- Cultural Heritage Online: Former Yamamoto Residence (Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation Hall) Tea House
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/143981
- Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation: About Visiting
- https://www.yamakiyo.jp/about.html
- Oniwasan: Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation (Former Yamamoto Residence) Garden
- https://oniwa.garden/yamamoto-kiyoshi-nishinomiya/
- Nishinomiya Style: Yamamoto Kiyoshi Memorial Foundation (Former Yamamoto Residence)
- https://nishinomiya-style.jp/glossary/yamamotokiyoshi
Last verified: 2026.07.22