Former Ueda Family Residence Annex

About the Former Ueda Family Residence Annex

The Former Ueda Family Residence Annex (旧上田家住宅離れ, Kyū Ueda-ke Jūtaku Hanare) is a two-story wooden guest wing in Kaidecho, Muko City, Kyoto Prefecture, built around 1942 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 29, 2019. It is thought to have been built new when the Ueda family moved their Meiji-era main house to this site, and it is joined to the back of that house.

The Former Ueda Family Residence Annex has a hip-and-gable roof (the Irimoya-zukuri form) of interlocking pantiles and a building area of 39 square meters. Its walls are plastered in the exposed-post Shinkabe manner, except for the back wall facing the neighboring lot, which is clad in vertical boards.

Why the Annex Was Registered

The Ueda annex was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as forming, together with the main house, the heart of a traditional residential compound.

The main house dates from 1910; the Former Ueda Family Residence Annex belongs to the move of the early Shōwa years, so two generations of formal rooms meet along a single veranda. Muko City is careful on this point, writing only that the annex appears to have been newly built in 1942 when the family relocated.

Two Linked Tatami Rooms and an Upstairs Chamber

The ground floor of the Former Ueda Family Residence Annex is a pair of connected tatami rooms, four and a half mats and six mats according to Muko City. Lean-to roofs on the south and east sides shelter a veranda. In the inner room, a Tokonoma alcove and staggered Chigaidana shelves fill the north wall; the alcove floor is laid with tatami, and its post is an imported tropical hardwood. Set this beside the cedar, black persimmon, and zelkova of the main house's alcove and the change in taste between 1910 and 1942 becomes visible.

Upstairs are an eight-mat room and a storage room. Of the five registered structures, the annex is the only one with a living room on an upper floor, so its taller roof rises behind the single-story main house.

The inner storehouse stands just west of the annex. The city notes that you can walk along the veranda from the tatami rooms of the main house and the annex straight to the storehouse door, linking the family's formal rooms with the store that held their household goods.

Visiting the Annex

The inner six-mat room and the four-and-a-half-mat room of the Former Ueda Family Residence Annex are rented out for a fee, and tea utensils and an electric kettle can be hired with them. A sencha tea gathering is scheduled here in October 2026. The city does not state how far casual visitors may enter the annex rooms, and bookings vary by day, so ask at the reception. Nor do its pages say whether the upper floor is open.

The Former Ueda Family Residence Annex sits behind the main house; according to the city, a sliding door on the north side of the main-house kitchen leads out to the back garden and the annex. Whether photography is allowed is not stated, so check at the reception. Opening days and directions are on the Former Ueda Family Residence (Muko) page.