Restaurant Tokugetsuro Connecting Corridor

The Route Itself Is Registered

Restaurant Tokugetsuro Connecting Corridor is a single-storey timber passage in Minamiharimayacho, Kochi City, built in 1950, remodelled in 1957, and entered on the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 February 2016. It covers 33 square metres.

What carries the registration is circulation. A corridor running south from the main building, a waiting area at its far end, and a junction that divides toward the guest room and the Koyo room: the three together are treated as one structure.

Without Restaurant Tokugetsuro Connecting Corridor the buildings on the site would not connect at all. The sequence a restaurant of this kind depends on, receiving guests at the entrance and leading them to rooms that face the garden, is concentrated in this single structure.

Two Ceilings

Restaurant Tokugetsuro Connecting Corridor was registered under the criterion for design that sets a standard, with the number 39-0282. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as careful sukiya-style work in which the whole is well balanced.

Balance is the right word because the structure is made of three parts with three different jobs. A corridor for walking, a waiting area for pausing, a junction for choosing a direction. Each wants a different width and a different height.

The design resolves this overhead. The corridor runs three and a half bays, with polished logs exposed as decorative rafters and a boat-bottom ceiling that rises at the centre and falls toward the sides. The ceiling moves gently up and down at walking pace.

The waiting area measures two bays by one and a half, and its ceiling is woven matting, thin strips of bamboo or wood plaited into a close, fine-grained surface. The place where a guest sits down gets the ceiling with the most handwork in it.

Lines of round timber where you walk, a woven plane where you stop. Within one structure, the character of the ceiling switches according to what the space is for.

Stop Instead of Passing Through

Anyone heading to the southern rooms crosses Restaurant Tokugetsuro Connecting Corridor on the way. Walked at the pace of someone being shown to a table, it takes half a minute, which is precisely the problem.

In the corridor, look up. The polished log rafters are arranged into the boat-bottom profile, and because each log was debarked and finished individually, no two match exactly in thickness or curve. A ceiling of uniform sawn timber aligns in a way this one never does.

In the waiting area, examine the plaiting. The direction of the weave catches the light differently depending on where you sit.

At the junction, look at the floor and at where the route divides. One way leads to the guest room, the other to the Koyo room, and the choice settles the angle from which you will see the garden.

Conditions for Visiting

Restaurant Tokugetsuro Connecting Corridor is a passage rather than a room, so guests who reserve a meal walk through it whichever room they use. It is not something to request.

It lies within the site and cannot be seen from the street. Photography is not addressed on the official website, so anyone hoping to photograph the ceilings should ask when booking. Other guests use the corridor as well, so pick a spot that does not block the way if you stop.

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