A Black-Plastered Gate That Divides a Garden
Where the front gate of the Takatsu family residence wears white plaster, the garden gate inside the compound is finished in black. This udegi-mon, a gate hung from bracket arms, runs on a north-south line and splits the ground before the main house into two: an entrance forecourt on the west, and a viewing garden for the reception rooms on the east. The division turns a single open space into a sequence, one side for arriving, the other for looking out from the best rooms of the house.
The residence stands in Fukashino, a settlement in the Mikunino district of Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, and was the home of a family that practiced medicine there from the late Edo period. The garden gate and its wall are the latest of the five listed structures, built around 1907 (Meiji 40), and were registered together with the rest of the compound in 2021.
Why the Garden Gate Was Registered
The garden gate and wall were entered on the national register on 14 October 2021 (registration number 28-0776), under the criterion of contributing to the historic character of the land. Their value lies in how they order the interior of the compound. A gentry house of this kind was not a single open plot but a composed space, and the garden gate is the instrument that composed it, giving the reception rooms a garden of their own set apart from the everyday approach.
The gate itself is a gabled sangawara-tiled udegi-mon with a hinged door and a lattice transom above it. The flanking wall is also tile-roofed, finished in black lime plaster over shinkabe with the posts exposed, and boarded vertically along the lower course. At intervals of one bay, the wall opens with lattice windows made of naguri timber, wood left with the rippled marks of the adze. The opening is modest, about 1.6 metres, but the wall carries on for some 11 metres.
What to Look For
The colour is the first thing to register. Black plaster gives the garden gate a quieter, more inward tone than the white front gate, suited to the private world of the reception garden rather than the public face of the street. Then look at the wall's lattice windows: the naguri finish leaves each strut faintly rippled where the adze passed over it, a texture prized in tea-house taste and carried here into a domestic wall. The rhythm of one window per bay measures out the length of the wall as you walk beside it.
Read together, the two gates explain how the family thought about its ground. The white gate handled the approach from outside; the black gate handled the view from within. The property is understood to remain a private residence and is not regularly open to the public, but the garden gate shows, even from a distance, how much care went into the interior settings of a rural doctor's house.
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Q&A
- What does the garden gate do?
- It divides the ground in front of the main house into an entrance forecourt on the west and a viewing garden for the reception rooms on the east.
- Why is it black rather than white?
- The black plaster gives it a quieter, more private tone suited to the interior garden, in contrast to the white front gate that faces the street.
- What is naguri timber?
- It is wood finished with an adze, which leaves a rippled surface. The technique is valued in tea-house architecture, and here it is used for the lattice windows in the wall.
- When was it built?
- Around 1907 (Meiji 40), which makes it the most recent of the five registered structures at the residence.
- Can it be visited?
- The residence is understood to be private and is not regularly open to the public. The gate and wall can be seen from outside the compound.
Basic Information
| Name | Takatsu Family Residence, Garden Gate and Wall (Takatsuke Jutaku Niwamon oyobi Hei) |
|---|---|
| Location | 586 Kitatakuji, Fukashino, Mikunino-cho, Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture |
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building) |
| Registered | 14 October 2021 (registration no. 28-0776) |
| Count | 1 structure |
| Date | c. 1907 (Meiji 40) |
| Structure | Gate: timber, tile roof, opening approx. 1.6 m. Wall: timber, tile roof, total length approx. 11 m |
| Access | Private residence; not regularly open to the public |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database (Agency for Cultural Affairs) — Takatsu Family Residence, Garden Gate and Wall
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00014071
- Cultural Heritage Online — Takatsuke Jutaku Omoya (residence main house record)
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/520417
- Kobe Shimbun — report on the national registration of the Takatsu residence and other buildings
- https://www.kobe-np.co.jp/news/sougou/202107/0014508963.shtml
Last verified: 2026.07.04