Former Yamanaka Family Residence (Formerly Located in Besshiyama Village, Uma District, Ehime Prefecture)

What the Former Yamanaka Family Residence is

The Former Yamanaka Family Residence is a thatched farmhouse of the late eighteenth century standing at Kamikuroiwa in Kumakōgen, Ehime Prefecture, and it was designated an Important Cultural Property on 17 June 1970. Its full registered name is the Former Yamanaka Family Residence (Formerly Located in Besshiyama Village, Uma District, Ehime Prefecture), the parenthesis recording where the building stood before it was moved.

Besshiyama was a mountain village that held the Besshi copper mine, and its territory now belongs to the city of Niihama. The former village of Mikawa, today part of Kumakōgen, had been designated by the prefecture as a "rock shelter culture district", and it acquired the farmhouse and re-erected it at Kamikuroiwa in 1975. The new site sits beside the Kamikuroiwa Rock Shelter, a Jōmon period archaeological site, so the house now stands well away from the settlement it belonged to, functioning as part of an interpretive precinct.

The building measures 14.4 metres along the ridge by 7.7 metres deep, under an Irimoya-zukuri roof of Kayabuki thatch, with boarded outer walls. No document or Munafuda survives to date it, so the age rests entirely on the reading of construction details. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the late eighteenth century; Ehime Prefecture and the town of Kumakōgen both describe it as mid to late eighteenth century. The spread reflects the fact that the evidence is stylistic rather than documentary.

Why this farmhouse was designated

The case rests on the plan. The interior of the Former Yamanaka Family Residence divides into three along its length. At the west, the upper end, is the zashiki with a Tokonoma alcove and a closet on its south side. The centre is the omote. Both of these rooms share an Engawa veranda running along the north front. The eastern third holds the chanoma, with a small room called the oku behind it to the south. The rooms sit in a single row.

There is almost no Doma. A small earth-floored area, one and a half bays wide and half a bay deep, has been reconstructed projecting from the northeast side of the chanoma, and that is the whole of it. Ordinary farmhouses of the period devote a large share of their footprint to a working earth floor. The Agency for Cultural Affairs summary notes that the interior is narrow, the rooms are set in a line and the earth floor is nearly absent, and attributes the arrangement to terrain. In the central mountains of Shikoku, near the boundary with Kōchi Prefecture, level ground is scarce, and a house had little option but to stretch sideways.

Ehime Prefecture treats the layout as a type specimen for mountain dwellings in this range. Narrow earth floors and single-file rooms occur widely in upland villages, but here the traits are unusually pronounced. The building is also old for its type and has survived in good condition. An early, legible example of a regional type is what the designation protects.

What to look at

The entrance is on the left as you face the building. What registers first inside is the low ceiling and how shallow the rooms are front to back. The 7.7 metre depth is real, but a good share of it belongs to the surrounding lean-to. The frame is built as an inner structure with a Geya aisle wrapping around it.

Look up. The roof frame combines sasu rafter couples with ridge posts, a mixed method that shows plainly from below where the thatch is carried. Upland roof framing varies from valley to valley in Japan, and this particular combination is worth a photograph.

Inside, note how often sashi-kamoi are used: heavy horizontal members spanning between posts, carrying the wall above and setting the height of every opening. Combined with boarded walls, they make the whole interior a composition of timber faces. Light behaves differently here than in a house finished with earthen plaster, and that difference is the point of standing still for a minute.

The veranda faces north, which is the front. Zashiki and omote share it and look out from there. A house that does not chase the sun is telling you how little choice it had about orientation on a mountain slope.

Step outside and the Kamikuroiwa Rock Shelter lies about 90 metres away, with a small museum holding the finds. The shelter was occupied from the beginning of the Jōmon period around 14,500 years ago into its later phases, and is known for engraved stone figurines. Placing a Jōmon rock shelter and an eighteenth century farmhouse within sight of each other was a deliberate decision by the local authority, and the walk between them takes about two minutes.

Visiting the Former Yamanaka Family Residence

Entry is free and the interior can be walked through without restriction. Hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The house closes every Monday and for the whole of the winter, from 1 December to 31 March, so the season matters more here than at most sites. Enquiries go to the Kumakōgen Board of Education on 0892-21-0139.

The town publishes no restriction on photography, and interiors can be photographed. When an event is being held on site, follow the instructions given there.

The house stands beside National Route 33, across the Kuma River, about twelve minutes by car from the Kumakōgen town hall. From Matsuyama the approach is south along Route 33. By public transport, the JR Shikoku bus on the Matsuyama to Kōchi express road route runs along Route 33, and the Kamikuroiwa Iseki-mae stop is the nearest. Services are infrequent, so check the timetable before setting out.

The Kamikuroiwa Rock Shelter museum next door charges admission and keeps the same hours and closing days. Allow about an hour to see the archaeological site and the farmhouse together.

Hours and admission were checked against the Kumakōgen town website on 4 September 2026.