Hatanaka Family Residence

A Complete Homestead in Doi

The Hatanaka Family Residence (畠中家住宅, Hatanaka-ke Jūtaku) is a farming family's estate at Higashitakazono in Doi, Aki City, Kochi Prefecture, built between the early Meiji era and the early Showa era, whose 9 buildings, gates and walls were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 28 April 2010. The estate keeps its whole layout, from the front gate to the back storehouses.

The nine are five buildings (the main house, the rice and clothing storehouse, the tool storehouse, the guardhouse and the firewood shed) and four structures (the main gate, the middle gate, the outer wall, and the garden gate with its tsukiji wall). The only firm date is 1886, which applies to the main gate, the middle gate, the guardhouse and the garden gate. The main house is dated to the early Meiji era, the two storehouses and the outer wall to the mid-Meiji era, and the firewood shed to the early Showa era.

They carry consecutive registration numbers, 39-0260 to 39-0268, and were all entered on the same day under the same criterion: a contribution to the historic landscape.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

Read together, the Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions give a clear plan. The main house stands in the middle of the plot facing south, with a two-storey kitchen wing at the back. The front of the estate is the south side: the main gate opens at the centre of the south boundary, with a small stone bridge in front of it, and the guardhouse sits in the south-west corner, forming the formal frontage together with the gate.

A partition wall runs north to south from the south-west corner of the main house to the guardhouse, with the middle gate halfway along it. It separates the approach to the house from a working yard on the west. Between the approach and the garden stand the garden gate and a short tsukiji wall.

The storehouses cluster on the working side. West of the house is the long rice and clothing storehouse, and from the south end of its eaves runs the narrow firewood shed. West of the kitchen wing stands the tool storehouse, which closes off the back of the estate. The outer wall encloses the east side and the eastern ends of the south and north sides.

The result is a plot divided by gates and walls into a formal approach, a garden and a working yard.

Kochi Details Across the Estate

Local materials and methods tie the nine together. Upper walls are finished in Tosa-shikkui, lower walls are clad in boards, and buildings and walls rest on Kikkōzumi, hexagon-patterned stonework. Roofs use Sangawara-buki, and the Hatanaka Family Residence mixes left-lapping and right-lapping pantiles, which the national record cites as a regional trait.

The ridges of the guardhouse and the main gate are decorated with flat tiles laid in the seigaiha wave pattern, and part of the outer wall's east face is built of river stones in the local ishiguro style. None of these is dramatic on its own, but across the estate they show one consistent building tradition.

Relation to the Noradokei Clock House

About 50 metres to the north stands the Hatanaka Family Residence (Noradokei), the house with the famous clock tower, whose main house and storehouse were registered in 1996 at a different address, 638-4 Doi, and under a different name.

Both belong to Hatanaka families of Doi and they are close neighbours, but the national registrations are separate, and we found no public source explaining how the two households are related. This site therefore treats them as two separate estates.

Visiting

The Hatanaka Family Residence is a private home, and we found no information about public openings. The interior and grounds are closed. If you look at it, do so from the road over the walls, and pass quietly.

It lies just south of the Noradokei clock house. The nearest station is Aki on the Tosa Kuroshio Railway Gomen-Nahari Line; the Aki City Tourist Association gives about 5 minutes by car or 10 minutes by rental bicycle from the station to Noradokei. The free car park east of Noradokei is intended for visitors to the clock house; since the Hatanaka Family Residence is not a visitor facility, no parking is offered for it.