Okamoto Family Residence Outdoor Toilet

The Smallest Building on the Register Here

The Okamoto Family Residence Outdoor Toilet (岡本家住宅外便所, Okamoto-ke Jūtaku Sotobenjo) is a single-storey timber privy at Mori in Ozu Town, Kikuchi District, Kumamoto Prefecture, built in the early Shōwa period and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 23 August 1999. It stands between the main house and the rear gate of the Okamoto compound, registration number 43-0032.

It has a tiled roof and a building area of 2.1 square metres, a little more than a single tatami mat, which makes it the smallest registered structure on the property. An attached plank fence is part of the registration.

Putting the toilet in a separate outbuilding was standard practice in rural Japanese houses well into the twentieth century. What is unusual about the Okamoto Family Residence Outdoor Toilet is not that it exists but how much thought went into it.

Small Building, Considered Design

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the building as simple overall, yet designed with a certain care, and it points to three details.

The first is at ground level, where the base of the walls is faced with brick. Damp and splashing rain shorten the life of small timber buildings, and a brick plinth protects the sill while giving the little structure a firm red line along its foot.

The second and third concern air. The windows on the left and right are set at different positions, and the roof is built in two offset sections so that one overlaps the other with a gap between. Both were meant to keep the room well ventilated, and both give the building a lopsided, slightly quirky character that its function explains entirely.

It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, as one of the working outbuildings that shape the area around the rear gate.

What to Look For

The offset roof and the staggered windows are the details that make the Okamoto Family Residence Outdoor Toilet worth a second look. The stepped roof, designed to let air escape through the gap, is a world away from the neat gables of the gates and storehouses around it. The brick plinth is the clearest sign of its early Shōwa date on a property otherwise built in timber, tile and plaster.

Seeing the Outdoor Toilet

The toilet stands inside a private compound between the main house and the rear gate, and it is not open to visitors. Small and tucked behind the rear gate and fence, it is barely visible from the public road on the south side.

Please do not enter the grounds or peer over the gate. From the lane in front of the rear gate you can at least place it within the layout of the compound.