Former Sugano Family Residence Annex

A Silkworm Shed That Became a Guest Wing

The Former Kanno Family Residence Detached Wing (旧菅野家住宅離れ, Kyū Kanno-ke Jūtaku Hanare) is a two-storey timber building of 1910 in Setamai, Sumita Town, Kesen District, Iwate Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 2 May 2017. It stands immediately east of the main house, and both now form part of the community facility Machiya Setamai-eki.

It was not built for people. The wing went up as a sericulture building, and the low ground floor still shows why: the ceiling is neda-tenjō, joists left exposed with boards laid straight across them, the cheapest possible finish and the right one for a room full of silkworm trays.

The Kanno Family and the Post Town

Setamai grew as a post station where roads crossed, a market where seafood from the Sanriku coast met grain from the interior. Its street plan has barely shifted since the domain era, and the row of gable-entered town houses and plastered storehouses along the old highway still defines the place.

The Kanno family stood at the centre of that trade across successive generations, working as silk brokers, dealers in gold and silver, and merchants in rice and sundries. One member served as Setamai's first town mayor; another was a musician. The house they left behind is the deep, narrow eel's-bed plan that town-house merchants built everywhere, running back from a modest street frontage into a long chain of rooms and yards.

Six structures were registered together on 2 May 2017 as the Former Kanno Family Residence: the main house, this detached wing, and four earthen-walled storehouses. The main house of the late Meiji period covers 127 square metres; the largest storehouse, Storehouse Two of 1899, reaches 99 square metres and carries a king-post truss over its southern half, a detail that shows Western structural carpentry arriving in a rural Iwate merchant's yard before 1900.

Looking at the Wing

The building runs east to west under a hipped-and-gabled tiled roof, covering 52 square metres. Both floors repeat the same pair of rooms: an eight-mat zashiki and a six-mat room side by side. An internal veranda wraps from the south side round to the east in an L, turning a right angle rather than following the wall.

The ground floor sits noticeably low. That is the sericulture inheritance, and it is the first thing to look for. Upstairs the proportions are ordinary, which tells you the conversion to living and guest space happened by degrees rather than all at once. Alterations came around 1945 and again in the 2016 restoration.

Registration cited the criterion of contributing to the historical landscape of the nation, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs description notes two things worth holding onto: the construction date is documented, which is uncommon for outbuildings of this kind, and the wing records how the use of the site changed over time.

One caution on dates. The Agency database gives the era-name year as Meiji 43, which corresponds to 1910, but its Western-calendar field reads 1990. The latter is evidently a data-entry error, and 1910 is the date to rely on.

Visiting Machiya Setamai-eki

Sumita Town restored the Kanno property and reopened it in 2016 as Machiya Setamai-eki, a residents' exchange facility now managed by the local general incorporated association SUMICA. Inside are the community café SUMI cafe, the restaurant Kerasse serving food built around Kesen-district produce, a hospitality space at the rear of the main house, an experience room above it, and a gallery in one of the storehouses facing the inner courtyard.

The facility opens 9:00 to 18:00 and closes on Wednesdays. Telephone 0192-22-7808. The address is 13 Setamai-eki, Setamai, Sumita Town. There is no admission charge for entering the building, though the restaurant and café operate on their own hours.

Note that the detached wing is one component of a working community facility rather than a museum exhibit, so interior access to this particular building depends on how the rooms are being used that day. Ask at reception. Exterior photography from the courtyard is straightforward.

The bus stop at Setamai is two minutes away on foot. By car, Ōfunato Interchange on the Sanriku Expressway is about 25 minutes distant. Walking the old street afterwards costs nothing and is the point of coming: the storehouse walls along the Kesen River are what the registration criterion was talking about.