Shima Family Residence Main House

A thatched L-shaped farmhouse with a Genroku inscription

The Shima Family Residence Main House (島家住宅主屋, Shimake Jūtaku Shuoku) is a thatched farmhouse of the middle Edo period in the Furuuchi district of Shirosato, Ibaraki Prefecture, entered on the national list of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 21 August 2002. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the building to roughly 1661 to 1750, with alterations made between about 1830 and 1867.

Two wings meet at a right angle. The omoya, the living wing, measures 7 ken along its ridge by 4 across. Attached to it is the kamaya, a wing of 6 ken with a stable built into its southeast corner. Together they cover 165 square metres. The frame is timber, the building single-storey, and the roof is Kayabuki.

The Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education places the house in the bunmuneigata lineage, a type in which the cooking quarters stand as a separate structure from the living quarters. In the Shima Family Residence Main House the two have been joined into one continuous L. The evidence is in the roof frame: the interior carries its own sasu truss, a pair of rafters leaning together to carry the ridge beam, which is what you would expect if the wing had once stood on its own.

One piece of physical evidence bears on the date. When posts and beams in the earth-floored area were replaced, an ink inscription carrying the era name Genroku is said to have come to light in the roof frame. Genroku ran from 1688 to 1704. The omoya, judged from the way its posts are finished, was reworked in the closing years of the Edo period. Two centuries sit inside one building.

Why it was registered

The Shima Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion that covers buildings serving as a model of design, rather than the more common criterion of contribution to the historic landscape. Its registration number is 08-0073.

What earned that judgement is the roof of the kamaya wing. Its south slope is cut off partway down in the manner of a kabuto-zukuri roof, and a latticed bay window sits under the cut. The prefectural board calls this a maekabuto cut. Slicing the slope short lets light and air reach a house that is otherwise buried under deep thatch. Above the indoor stable, the earth-floored area gains a half-storey loft, so the roof space is put to work rather than left hollow.

A Registered Tangible Cultural Property is meant to stay in use while it is protected. Here the user changed in 2016, when the family gave the house to the town of Shirosato. What had been a private home is now maintained by the municipality together with local residents.

Sources differ on how the address is written. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives 神古内字竹ノ内 480, while the prefectural board and the town both write 上古内 480-1. Both spellings are read Kamifuruuchi, and the second is the one used locally.

Smoke is what keeps the roof standing

Smell registers before architecture at the Shima Family Residence Main House. Firewood is burned indoors and the smoke is allowed to soak the underside of the thatch. This treatment, called kunjō, is carried out about once a month by Shirosato's community revitalisation team. The smoke discourages insects and keeps the timber dry. In a house where a family cooked over a hearth every day it happened by itself; in an empty house somebody has to make it happen. The work runs from morning to evening, and it consists largely of not letting the fire go out.

Step onto the earth floor and the cooking range and the Irori sunken hearth are still there. The Zashiki rooms open into one another, and the beams overhead have gone black with soot.

Part of the grounds is a tea field. According to the town, about 250 seedlings of the Hatsune variety were planted in the plot beside the house in April 2017 by the Furuuchi tea growers' cooperative. They were raised from a parent tree at Seionji temple in Shimofuruuchi, part of an effort to bring back a tea said to have been favoured and named by Tokugawa Mitsukuni, lord of the Mito domain. Picking comes in May. Furuuchi tea has long been grown along the Fujii River, and the same hands now tend both the building and the plants in its garden.

Visiting the Shima Family Residence Main House

The town of Shirosato owns the Shima Family Residence Main House, but it is not a building that stands open. Opening coincides with the monthly smoking day, when visitors are welcome. Because the date shifts from month to month, ring Shirosato town hall on 029-288-3111 before setting out. There is no admission charge.

Photography outside is unrestricted. Inside, people are working with fire, so ask before setting up a tripod. The hearth smoke fills the room and it will follow you home on your clothes.

Furuuchi lies toward the north of the town and is hard to reach without a car. Ibaraki Kotsu buses connect Mito and Akatsuka stations on the JR Joban Line with Ishizuka, the centre of Shirosato, but services beyond that point are thin. Allow about 40 minutes by car from Mito Station, or 30 minutes from the Mito interchange on the Joban Expressway. The road climbs north along the Fujii River.