Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Front Gate

The Gate to the Main Entrance

The Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Front Gate, in the Kawara district of Nishihara Village, Aso District, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a timber gate built in 1870 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 7 June 1999.

Known in Japanese as 矢野家住宅（本宅）表門 (omotemon, the front gate), it is the formal entrance to the head household's compound. It stands on the road along the western side of the plot, just south of the miso storehouse, set back a little from the road, and the path through it leads to the entrance of the main house. Its frontage of 2.7 metres is the widest of the three listed gates.

The gate is a yakuimon of one bay with a single opening, roofed in gabled form with pantiles. Roofed earthen walls join it on both sides, and they are included in the listing.

Samurai Styling at a Farm Gate

The Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Front Gate was listed as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to its heavy main posts and its samurai-house styling, which it shares with the main house. The yakuimon type is common at warrior residences and temples, and a family of samurai descent placing one at the front of a rural estate can be read as a statement about where the household came from.

The date, 1870, is the earliest among the eight Yano buildings. The middle and rear gates are of the same year; the gates came first, and the main house followed three years later, in 1873.

Look at the Posts and the Walls

A yakuimon carries its roof on two main posts, which hold the doors, and a pair of rear posts behind them. Here the main posts are thick timbers, and that is where the samurai character the Agency describes is concentrated. Stand square to the gate and compare the heft of the posts with the reach of the gabled roof above.

Because the Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Front Gate is pulled back from the road, a narrow margin opens in front of it. The earthen walls on either side carry their own small roofs, and their line continues into the fronts of the miso storehouse and barn to the north, forming the public face of the compound along the western road.

Visiting the Front Gate

The Yano Family Residence (Hontaku) Front Gate faces the western road, and the gate and its flanking walls can be seen from the public way. The ground inside is private, and visitors cannot pass through.

Stand at the edge of the road, out of the way of traffic. Keep photography to exterior shots from the road. The main house lies beyond the gate and is hard to see from outside.