Urushibara Family Residence Bathhouse

What the Bathhouse Is

The Urushibara Family Residence Bathhouse (漆原家住宅湯殿, Urushibara-ke Jūtaku Yudono) in Mitani-cho, Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture, is a guest bath and lavatory built around 1902 for a rural samurai estate, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on February 27, 2023.

A single-storey timber building with a tiled roof and a building area of just 17 square meters, it is the smallest of the eight registered structures on the estate. It stands west of the reception rooms of the main house and is reached from them along an open veranda.

Built for Guests

The Urushibara Family Residence Bathhouse is register no. 37-0478, listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a refined facility for receiving guests.

That is the point of the building: this was not the family's bath but one for visitors shown into the reception rooms. The date matters too. Around 1902, when the bathhouse went up, the main house was also being altered, and it is reasonable to see both as part of one effort to improve the rooms where guests were entertained.

An Iron-Tube Tub and a Celadon Toilet

The roof is a gable (Kirizuma-zukuri), originally laid in Hongawarabuki. The walls leave the frame exposed (Shinkabe), and round logs are used freely in the framing, giving the building a light, rustic look.

The building is split in two. The south half is the bath, with a washing area fitted with a shelf and a teppo-buro: a wooden tub heated by a fire lit inside an iron tube standing in the water. The north half is the lavatory, where the toilet bowl is celadon-glazed porcelain. An open corridor on the east side links the two.

Small lattice-backed windows (Shitaji-mado) are cut in the walls, one in the shape of a quarter circle and another as a full circle. Even in a building this size, someone took care over the shape of the windows.

Seeing the Bathhouse

The Urushibara Family Residence Bathhouse stands on the west side of the main house, inside the grounds and out of sight of the road. The estate is a private home, and there is no opportunity to visit.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs database has photographs of the building from the southwest and of the east corridor seen from the northeast.