Fujita Family Residence Main House

What Is the Fujita Family Residence Main House in Yokooji?

The Fujita Family Residence Main House (藤田家住宅主屋, Fujita-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-story wooden family home built in 1876 in Yokooji Kusatsu-cho, Fushimi Ward, Kyoto, with a building area of 191 square meters, and it was entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 1998.

The house stands on an old highway along the left bank of the Katsura River, but not right against the road: it is set back a little behind a forecourt. It was the principal dwelling of a family who, in the Edo period, were rice merchants and village headmen (Shōya), and it was registered together with the storehouse on the same property.

Kyoto has a second registered "Fujita Family Residence Main House," a weaving family's townhouse in Nishijin, Kamigyo Ward. The two are unrelated buildings of different families.

Why It Was Registered

The Fujita Family Residence Main House was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 11, 1998 (registration number 26-0032), with official notice following on December 25, for its contribution to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to three things: a neatly ordered six-room plan with a broad earthen-floored Doma work area, a notable timber framework over that doma, and a well-built exterior that is widely familiar to people in the area. A house that has served as a landmark along the old road for well over a century is precisely what the "historic landscape" criterion is meant to recognize.

One figure differs between sources. The national record gives the building area as 191 square meters, while the Kyoto association of owners of registered cultural properties gives 169 square meters. This article follows the national record; the public sources do not explain the difference.

Highlights

Six Rooms and a Wide Earthen Floor

The core of the Fujita Family Residence Main House is a regular grid of six rooms, two rows of three, with a wide doma along its south side. The layout is common in rural houses and country merchants' homes, but the doma here is unusually generous. When the national record says its framing is "worth seeing," it means the beams and struts that span this space; in a doma left open to the roof, the timber skeleton is where the scale of a house shows most plainly.

A Lower Wing for Guests

Beside the main block is an Ochimune section, a wing with its roof stepped down one level, holding two reception rooms of about ten mats each. The family's everyday rooms and the rooms for guests were thus divided by roofline as well as by function. According to the owners' association, the sliding doors between the ten-mat room and the eight-mat Buddhist altar room were painted by Kano Tangei, and those panels are now held by the Kyoto National Museum.

A Forecourt Made for Ox Carts

The owners' association explains the set-back position of the house this way: the space in front of the entrance was where ox carts lined up to be loaded with rice. It also notes a small side gate at the front right, used to receive important visitors. The empty ground between road and house, in other words, was the family's loading bay.

Seeing the Main House

The Fujita Family Residence Main House is still a private home, and its interior is not open. There is no opportunity to see the doma framing or the guest rooms; only the exterior can be viewed.

The front of the Fujita Family Residence Main House is visible from the road on the highway side. Because the house sits back from the road, standing across the street lets you take in the forecourt and the spread of the roof together. Please stay on public ground when looking or taking photographs.