Matsushita Family Residence Main House

About the Matsushita Family Residence Main House

The Matsushita Family Residence Main House (松下家住宅主屋, Matsushita-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-storey timber house from the early Meiji period in the Higashishioya district of Minamibeppu, Chiran Town, Minamikyushu City, Kagoshima Prefecture, and it became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 5, 2007. It has a tiled roof and a footprint of 200 square meters.

The house stands toward the west side of the plot and faces east. It is not one block but two, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls the nakae and the omote, and they do not line up neatly. Instead they are joined in a staggered, stepped arrangement, one block set slightly forward of the other.

Why It Was Registered

The Matsushita Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion of being a model of form. The Agency describes its offset pairing of nakae and omote as a traditional house type of the region.

Minamikyushu City notes that homes in southern Kyushu were once built as separate buildings: the omote, the nakae, the stable, the toilet and the bath each stood on its own, a pattern still seen in the islands farther south. Over time some households joined the omote and the nakae into a single dwelling. In Chiran, a version with a distinctive short connecting ridge became known as the Chiran-gata futatsuya, or Chiran-style twin house. The Matsushita house takes a different route to the same end, simply sliding the two blocks together so that the old idea of separate buildings is still easy to read from outside.

The two blocks are roofed differently, too. The nakae has a plain Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof and is entered from the gable end, in the Tsumairi manner. The omote is gabled on the side that meets the nakae but finishes in a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof at the back.

Short Eaves and White Gables

The roofs of the Matsushita Family Residence Main House are laid with Sangawara-buki pantiles, and a lean-to Geya runs around the building beneath the main eaves. The core of the house, rising above this skirt of lower roofs, has deliberately short eaves.

Its walls are finished in white Shikkui plaster right up into the gable triangles. Trimmed eaves and fully plastered gables give the house a low, settled look; the Agency itself singles out the steadiness of its exterior.

Compare the two rooflines when you look at it. One block stays gabled throughout, while the other changes to a hipped form at the rear, and the slight step between them is what makes the plan "staggered."

Viewing the Matsushita Family Residence Main House

The interior of the Matsushita Family Residence Main House is not open, and no public or special opening days could be found. Plan on seeing it from the road without entering the plot.

The house faces east, and the stone wall turns inward midway along the east side to form the entrance, so the east side gives the best view of its front. Please do not peer in through the entrance, and keep photography to the public road.