A Japanese Wing Joined to a Western House
Twenty-six years after the Takazoe family raised its Western house on this Takarazuka hillside, the household added a second building of an entirely different character. Completed in 1954, the Takazoe Family Residence, Japanese Building (Takazoe-ke Jutaku Wakan) is a single-story timber structure roofed in tile, with a building area of about 104 square metres. It was designed to be lived in alongside the 1928 Western house, and a corridor ties the two together, so that a resident could pass from a European parlour into a room of tatami and shoji without stepping outside.
This pairing of a foreign-style block and a Japanese-style block on one property, the wayo arrangement, was common among prosperous households of the Hanshin region in the early and middle twentieth century. The Western house handled entertaining and display; the Japanese wing handled daily domestic life and the rituals that went with it. At the Takazoe residence the second half of that pairing arrived late, in the postwar years, yet it was built with the same care as the first.
Why It Is Protected
The Japanese wing was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 29 November 2016, in the same 85th round as the rest of the compound, under number 28-0655. Its criterion differs from that of the Western house: the wing was listed as a structure that contributes to the historic landscape of the nation, the category for buildings whose value lies partly in the setting they help sustain.
The plan is easy to read. The entrance sits at the centre. To its north lie the dining room and kitchen. To the east is an eight-mat room fitted with formal alcove furnishings and wrapped on its outer side by a veranda. To the west is a former tea room. The building rewards attention in its materials and joinery rather than in scale. The eight-mat room uses a polished natural log as its alcove post, paired with an alcove sill finished in black lacquer, the kind of selection that marks a room built with good timber and a practised eye. The corridor that leads in from the Western house is covered by an arched boat-bottom ceiling, a curved treatment that turns a passage into a considered piece of design.
What to Look For
The Japanese wing is a private home and cannot be entered, so the details described here are known from the registration record rather than from a public tour. Understanding them still changes how the property reads from outside. Knowing that the tea room sits at the western end, and that the eight-mat room opens east onto its veranda, lets a visitor picture how light and use were distributed across the plan.
The most telling idea here is continuity between two very different buildings. The Western house of 1928 and the Japanese wing of 1954 were built a generation apart, in different materials and different idioms, yet they were meant to work as one home. The curved corridor is the hinge between them. Standing on the street and tracing where the two volumes meet gives a sense of how a single family held together the imported and the inherited across three decades of building.
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Q&A
- Can I visit the Japanese wing?
- No. It is part of a privately owned residence and is not open to the public. Please view the grounds only from the surrounding streets and respect the residents' privacy.
- Why was it built so much later than the Western house?
- The Western house dates to 1928 and the Japanese wing to 1954. Pairing a foreign-style block with a Japanese-style block was a long-standing pattern in the region; here the second half was completed in the postwar years and linked to the first by a corridor.
- What is a boat-bottom ceiling?
- It is a ceiling whose surface curves gently upward toward the centre, resembling the underside of a boat. In the connecting corridor here the form is arched, giving a plain passage a refined finish typical of sukiya-style taste.
- What are the alcove post and alcove sill?
- They are elements of the tokonoma, the decorative alcove of a formal Japanese room. The post frames one side of the alcove and the sill runs along its front edge. Here the post is a polished natural log and the sill is finished in black lacquer, both signs of careful material choice.
- How do I reach the area?
- The property is on the hillside north of Hibarigaoka-Hanayashiki Station on the Hankyu Takarazuka Line, about half an hour from Osaka-Umeda, in a quiet residential quarter.
Basic Information
| Name | Takazoe Family Residence, Japanese Building (Takazoe-ke Jutaku Wakan) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1-148 Hibarigaoka-yamate, Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registered 29 November 2016 (85th round), no. 28-0655 |
| Criterion | Contributes to the historic landscape of the nation |
| Built | 1954 (Showa 29) |
| Structure | Wood-framed, single storey, tile roof; building area about 104 square metres; one building |
| Access | Hillside above Hibarigaoka-Hanayashiki Station, Hankyu Takarazuka Line |
| Public access | Private residence; interior not open to the public |
References
- National Database of Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Takazoe Family Residence, Japanese Building
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00011367
- Cultural Heritage Online, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Takazoe Family Residence, Japanese Building
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/221094
- City of Takarazuka Official Website — List of Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.takarazuka.hyogo.jp/1060683/1060709/rekishi/1026244/1003729.html
Last verified: 2026.07.11