Yano Family Residence (Shintaku) Main House

A Branch Family's House of 1929

The Yano Family Residence (Shintaku) Main House, in the Kawara district of Nishihara Village, Aso District, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a family house built in 1929 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 7 June 1999.

In Japanese it is 矢野家住宅（新宅）主屋 (Yano-ke Jūtaku Shintaku Shuoku). The Shintaku, literally the new house, is the branch household that separated from the Yano head family at the end of the Meiji era and settled on the plot immediately east of it. The house was built by Yano Kazuma (矢野数馬), who served as head of Kawara village. It is the only building of the branch household among the eight Yano buildings on the register.

With a building area of 241 square metres it is second in size only to the head household's main house, at 333 square metres. The register describes it as single-storey with a partial 2nd storey under a tiled roof.

A House That Shows Its Period

The Yano Family Residence (Shintaku) Main House was listed as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs picks out its formal entrance, its roof built up in two tiers, and a full-dress reception room with an alcove and a writing desk, and says these features express their period well.

The head household's main house of 1873 follows the manners of a samurai residence; the branch house was built for a prominent local figure in the early Showa era. A village head would have received a steady flow of visitors, and the emphasis on entrance and reception room may reflect that. Two generations of one family's houses stand side by side, half a century apart.

Compare It with the Head House

Two elements from the Agency's description give a way into the building: the exterior with its formal entrance and two-tiered roof, and the reception room with its tokonoma and writing desk. Where the older main house next door borrows from the warrior class, the branch house shows how an established rural family furnished a house of standing after Japan had modernised.

As with the head household's buildings, the register's structure field gives this house as stone, single storey with a partial 2nd storey. Published sources do not confirm that a house with a formal reception room is really of stone, and the entry is reproduced here as it stands.

Visiting the Shintaku Main House

The Yano Family Residence (Shintaku) Main House is a private home inside the branch household's plot, next to the head house on the east, and the interior is not open. The grounds are private and cannot be entered.

How much of the house can be seen from the public road has not been confirmed. It does not share the western road where the head household's front gate and miso storehouse stand, so the exterior may not be visible at all. Keep photography to what the public road allows.