Restaurant Tokugetsuro Guest Room

An Exhibition Pavilion That Became a Tatami Room

Restaurant Tokugetsuro Guest Room is a single-storey timber tatami room in Minamiharimayacho, Kochi City, built in 1937, moved to its present site in 1950, and entered on the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 8 November 2004. It covers 73 square metres.

It did not begin as part of a restaurant. The forestry bureau put it up as an exhibition pavilion for the Nangoku Exposition held in Kochi in 1937. After the fair closed, the building was taken apart, carried across the city and reassembled as a dining room. The house calls it the Nampaku wing, after the exposition.

That history makes Restaurant Tokugetsuro Guest Room the only structure on the site that predates the war. The other five all went up from 1950 onward; this one arrived from somewhere else, having missed the fire.

It stands southeast of the main building, gable-roofed and tiled, four and a half bays by four and a half bays, so nearly square in plan. The southern gable end faces the garden, and a corridor with a waiting area links it back to the main building.

The Timber List by the Door

Restaurant Tokugetsuro Guest Room was registered under the criterion for design that sets a standard, with the registration number 39-0156.

Its origin as a forestry pavilion survives inside it. Mounted to the right of the entrance is a list of the woods used in the building. Hemlock fir for the posts, thresholds, purlins, rafters, backing boards, floorboards and the lintel of the alcove. Japanese fir for the head jambs, the nageshi rails, the ceiling surround and the finished soffits. Hinoki cypress for the veranda and the joinery. Maple for the alcove post, zelkova for the alcove floor and the sweet dishes, horse chestnut for the desk top, castor aralia for its legs, birch for the tea caddy box and the wall hangings. All of it came from national forest within the bureau's district, itemised species by species against the place it was used.

The panel is not an explanatory sign added later. It is exhibition material from 1937, and it tells you what the building was for: a demonstration of how different species should be used, put up so that visitors to the fair could walk through it. A forestry office advertising its timber by building a model house was ordinary practice at expositions of the period, and here the whole apparatus survived.

The house states that the building was put together without a single nail.

Inside are two rooms of 6 and 8 mats, with a lavatory and a storage closet to the north and a half-bay corridor running right around the perimeter. A plan drawn for exhibition turns out to work as a dining room with no obvious strain.

The Gable That Faces the Garden

Seen from outside, Restaurant Tokugetsuro Guest Room is best read from the south. The gable end faces the garden squarely, so the triangle of the bargeboards and the line of the eaves can be taken in from directly in front. A plan that is four and a half bays each way gives the roof pitch and the eaves overhang an easy proportion.

Inside, read the timber list before sitting down and the room looks different. Fir at the head jambs and rails, cypress in the sliding screens, maple at the alcove post. Few tatami rooms come with their own key to the materials.

The half-bay corridor around all four sides is worth noticing too. With only 6 and 8 mats of floor inside it, every direction has a layer of buffer, and light from the garden reaches the mats only after crossing that boundary.

Conditions for Visiting

Restaurant Tokugetsuro Guest Room is in service as a dining room. The official website presents it among the rooms available, so a guest who wants this particular one can raise it when booking. There is no sightseeing admission.

Because the building sits at the southeastern, inner edge of the garden, it cannot be seen from the street. Photography is not addressed on the website, so anyone who wants to photograph the timber list or the room itself should ask when reserving.

There are steps in the buildings, and the house advises that wheelchairs may enter once the tyres are wiped. Opening hours and directions are gathered on the Restaurant Tokugetsuro site page.