Hisada Family Hanshoan Tea House

Hisada Family Hanshoan Tea House: A Reception Room and a Small Tea Room of 1886

The Hisada Family Hanshoan Tea House (久田家半床庵茶室) is a single-storey timber tea house built in 1886 on Takakura-dori south of Nijo, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto City, and was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2013.

It is the heart of the house of the Hisada family, tea masters of the Omotesenke school, and holds a seven-mat reception room and the small tea room called Hanshoan, the name the family itself goes by. It was registered on 24 December 2013 and belongs to the Hanshoan Cultural Foundation.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists a single-storey timber building roofed mainly in tile, partly in wooden shingles and copper, with a building area of 81 square metres. It was built in the same year as the Hisada Family Hanshoan Koshikake, the waiting bench across the garden, and the two were registered on the same day.

Why It Was Registered

The agency describes Hanshoan as an original tea room that combines one full mat and two daime mats (about three quarters of a standard mat) with a board inset (nakaita) and a one-mat host's area, and says it conveys the style of Sozen, the third head of the Hisada family. The board sits between host and guests and adjusts the distance between them within a very small space.

In the reception room, posts of round logs with one face planed flat are used at the alcove and elsewhere. Together, the small room's invention and the larger room's sukiya techniques, preserved in a Meiji-era rebuilding, form the core of its value.

What to Look For

The roof is gabled and laid with interlocking tiles, with the eaves and similar parts in shingles and copper. The plan centres on the seven-mat reception room, with a corridor (irigawa) to the east, the Hanshoan tea room to the north and the entrance to the south.

If you join a tour, look first for the planed log posts around the alcove of the reception room, then move to Hanshoan on the north side and find where the board sits between host and guests. Tracing the sequence of one mat, two daime mats, the board and the host's mat underfoot makes Sozen's design concrete.

Across the garden stands the waiting bench. Guests wait there and walk through the garden to the tea house, so it helps to see the Hisada Family Hanshoan Tea House as the end point of that route.

Visiting the Tea House

The interior of the Hisada Family Hanshoan Tea House is not open on a regular basis. Tours are limited to dates set by the Hanshoan Cultural Foundation and require advance booking; because the rooms are used for tea gatherings, dates and places are limited.

Inside, do not touch the mats or fittings, and follow your guide. Ask about photography during the tour. Location, access and booking details are on the Hisada Family Hanshoan page.