Yano Family Residence Nagayamon Gate

About the Yano Family Residence Nagayamon Gate

The Yano Family Residence Nagayamon Gate (箟家住宅長屋門, Yano-ke Jūtaku Nagayamon) is a single-storey wooden nagayamon gatehouse built in 1905 in Gogazuka 3-chome, Itami City, Hyogo Prefecture, altered in the late Taisho era (1919 to 1926), and entered on the register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 6, 2024. It stands in the middle of the estate's south front, with a building area of 64 square meters and a smaller bracketed gate attached on its east side.

The roof is a hip-and-gable irimoya form covered in pantiles, with the long side facing the road. The gate passage opens a little east of center. East of it lies a single earthen-floored storeroom; west of it are two rooms, and the westernmost is an eight-mat tea room with a tokonoma alcove.

A gate that holds a room for receiving guests: that is what makes the Yano Nagayamon unusual.

Why It Was Registered

The Yano Family Residence Nagayamon Gate was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it a gatehouse that conveys the dignity of an old family and helps form the historic townscape of the village.

A nagayamon is a long building with rooms or storage on either side of the gateway, built into the line of the perimeter wall. In the Edo period the form belonged to samurai residences and to village headmen's houses. The Yano gate dates to 1905, after the old status rules on building had been swept away, and putting up a new gatehouse at that time can be read as a deliberate statement of the family's standing.

Within the estate, the gate answers the south face of the main house of 1838, where a raised shikidai entrance received important visitors. Guests who came through the gate were presumably led to that entrance, and the tea room inside the gate was also a space for guests. The whole south side of the Yano Family Residence was arranged as a sequence for receiving visitors.

What to Look For

A door of single cedar planks

The gateway of the Yano Nagayamon Gate is hung with a door made from single wide planks of cedar. Boards that broad and free of joints come only from large trees, and using such timber on the first thing a visitor sees says plenty about the gate's role as the face of the house.

A tea room inside the gate

The eight-mat room at the west end has a tokonoma and served as a tea room. Rooms in a nagayamon usually housed servants or stored goods, so fitting out one of them as a formal sitting room for tea sets this gate apart. You cannot see it from outside, but knowing that the room lies behind the western part of the south wall changes the way the gate looks.

The bracketed side gate

On the east side is a udegimon, a simple gate whose roof beams rest on arms projecting sideways from the posts. With this and the main gateway, the south front has two entrances side by side. The Agency's description does not say which served for formal occasions and which for daily comings and goings.

Visiting

The Yano Family Residence Nagayamon Gate is the front gate of a private house, and you cannot pass through it. The tea room and storeroom are also closed (checked September 26, 2026).

Even so, this is one of the easiest of the ten registered structures to see. Its south face looks onto the road, and the irimoya roof, the cedar door and the east side gate are all visible from the street. The Agency's photograph was taken from the south. The southwest wall runs west from the gate, and from across the road you can take in gate and wall together as the formal front of the estate.

The gateway is in daily use, so please do not block it. No sign prohibits photography, but do not aim a camera through the gate when it stands open.