Yano Family Residence Lattice Room

About the Yano Family Residence Lattice Room

The Yano Family Residence Lattice Room (箟家住宅格子の間, Yano-ke Jūtaku Kōshi-no-ma) is a 2-storey wooden building of the late Meiji era (1898 to 1912), altered around 1918, in Gogazuka 3-chome, Itami City, Hyogo Prefecture, and was entered on the register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 6, 2024. It is squeezed between the clothing storehouse and the grain storehouse on the north edge of the estate. With a building area of 20 square meters, it is the smallest of the 2-storey buildings among the ten registered structures.

As the name says, this is a ma, a room, not a storehouse. The ground floor served as a clothing room. It was originally laid with tatami and finished with a saobuchi ceiling of thin boards carried on slender battens, the standard ceiling of a Japanese sitting room. The upper floor is a board-floored storage loft.

The roof is a gable in hongawara tiles and the walls are lime plaster. From the street the Yano Lattice Room passes for one more storehouse in the row. Inside, it was finished as a room for people to sit in.

Why It Was Registered

The Yano Family Residence Lattice Room was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as part of the north edge of the estate that shapes the historic townscape.

Its value lies first in its place in that row. The Agency's text for the neighboring grain storehouse picks out the three connected buildings, with ridges at different heights, as the key to the north-side view. The lattice room is the middle one of the three. The clothing storehouse and the lattice room have two storeys and the grain storehouse only one, so the roofline changes height as it runs along the street.

It also has a character of its own. Tatami and a batten ceiling belong to living rooms, not to storage. A single clothing room has been slipped in among buildings meant for goods, and it reminds you that what looks like a uniform row of storehouses is really a mix of buildings with different jobs.

What to Look For

The projecting lattice window

On the north wall of the Yano Lattice Room, at ground-floor level, is a degōshi, a lattice window that projects from the face of the wall. It admits light and air while blocking views and intruders, and it almost certainly gave the building its name.

Cedar and plaster

The plastered walls are clad in cedar boards and battens up to just below the second-floor windows. The same treatment appears on the clothing storehouse to the west, and the grain storehouse to the east also carries tall cedar cladding, so the three north-side buildings share their materials. The grain storehouse even has a projecting lattice window of its own on the north face. The difference is behind the lattice: in the lattice room the window lit a tatami room, while in the grain storehouse it opens onto a single room for storing grain. The same kind of window serves two quite different buildings.

Two floors, two finishes

The ground floor has tatami and a batten ceiling; the upper floor has bare boards and was used for storage. The split suggests a floor for people below and a floor for things above, stacked on a footprint of just 20 square meters.

Visiting

The Yano Family Residence Lattice Room stands on private land and its interior is closed. Neither the tatami room nor the loft can be visited (checked September 26, 2026).

The building can be seen from the road on the north side. The photograph in the Agency's database shows this face, with the lattice window, the cedar cladding and the change in roof height from its neighbors. Step back far enough to take in the clothing storehouse, the lattice room and the grain storehouse in one view, and the stepped roofline becomes easy to read.

No sign prohibits photography. The window belongs to a family home, so avoid shots that peer through it.