Rooms Built for Guests, Around 1902
The Detached Guest Rooms of the Hori Family Residence (堀家住宅離れ座敷, Horike Jūtaku Hanare-zashiki) are a Meiji-period reception building in the Terada district of Jōyō City, Kyoto Prefecture, dated to around Meiji 35 (1902) and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011. The building stands southeast of the main house, its ridge running east to west, set apart from the working core of the compound.
It is small and it is deliberate. The plan measures 11 metres along the ridge by 5.8 metres in depth, a single timber storey covering 68 square metres, under a hipped-and-gabled irimoya roof of pantiles. Two rooms fill it: one of twelve and a half mats, one of eight. A veranda wraps the north and west faces, which means the rooms open toward the garden side rather than toward the road, and that the household could receive visitors here without taking them through the farmhouse at all.
The east wall of the principal room holds the formal fittings: a toko alcove and a tsukeshoin, the built-in writing shelf beneath a window that signals the highest rank of interior in a Japanese house. What the Agency for Cultural Affairs record singles out is the material chosen for the alcove. One post retains its bark, a kawatsuki-maruta, left rough on purpose. Another element uses tagayasan, a dense dark tropical hardwood counted among the karaki or imported woods, expensive and slow to work. Above, a small partition wall is pierced with a fan-shaped opening.
These are sukiya gestures. The sukiya manner grew out of the tea room and prizes irregularity, natural surfaces and quiet asymmetry over the squared formality of the older shoin style. A bark-covered post next to precisely joined tropical hardwood, a fan cut into a wall where a plain plaster panel would do: this is a household spending money to look as though it were not spending money.
A Late Addition to an Older Compound
The dating is what makes this building interesting within the Hori compound. The main house went up in Ansei 6 (1859), the northwest storehouse and the long gatehouse late in the Edo period, the east storehouse in Meiji 8 (1875). The detached rooms came around 1902, four decades after the main house and well into the modern era. The family was still building, and what it chose to build was a dedicated space for entertaining.
That choice reflects a wider pattern. Rural landholding families across the Kyoto and Osaka region added hanare-zashiki in the late Meiji years, separating hospitality from the daily life of the farmhouse. The older arrangement, receiving guests in the main house's inner rooms past the doma and the family quarters, had come to feel inadequate to households whose social contacts now extended beyond the village.
All seven buildings on the site were registered on the same day in 2011: the main house, these detached rooms, the northwest storehouse, the old storehouse, the east storehouse, the south storehouse with its adjoining room, and the long gatehouse, numbered 26-0373 through 26-0379. Registration under the system introduced in 1996 differs from designation as an Important Cultural Property. It is lighter, based on notification rather than permission, and is built around the idea that owners will continue to live in and use their buildings. For a compound still functioning as a family home, that distinction is the practical one.
The criterion recorded for the detached rooms is contribution to the historic landscape of the nation, the same criterion applied to the storehouses and the gate. Only the main house was registered under the stricter heading of being a model of design.
What a Visitor Can and Cannot See
The honest answer is: very little of this building. The detached rooms sit at the southeast of a walled private compound, behind the main house, oriented toward the garden. They are not visible from the public road, and the Hori Family Residence is a lived-in home with no public opening, no admission and no interior access.
This does not make the trip pointless, but it does change what the trip is. From the road east of Terada Station you can read the compound as a whole: the long gatehouse and the northwest storehouse forming the frontage, roof lines stepping back behind them. Knowing that a sukiya-influenced guest wing sits out of sight at the far corner adds a dimension to what is otherwise a wall and a gate.
Photography is fine from the public road, aimed at the buildings. Do not photograph residents, do not shoot into the compound, do not step through the gate. The lane is in daily use by the neighbourhood.
Terada Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line is about 300 metres west, four or five minutes on foot, roughly 35 minutes from Kyoto Station. JR Jōyō Station is around 15 minutes east on foot.
For anyone drawn here by the sukiya detailing rather than by the Hori family specifically, Kyoto city offers accessible examples of the same sensibility, and closer at hand the Jōyō City Museum of History and Folklore on the fourth floor of Bunka Parc Jōyō, five minutes south of Terada Station, sets out the material culture of this district. It opens 10:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, closes Mondays, and charges 200 yen for adults.
The main hall of Mito Shrine, 1.3 kilometres east below Mount Kōnosu, is an Important Cultural Property of Bunan 5 (1448) and the oldest building standing in the city: a single-bay nagare-zukuri hall under cypress bark, with a chidori-hafu gable over the front and openwork carving in the transom. It costs nothing to visit and the grounds are open. The main hall of Kuze Shrine is likewise designated.
A name to keep straight: the Hori Family Residence in Tatsuno City, Hyōgo Prefecture, is a separate property, designated an Important Cultural Property with 23 buildings, formerly the estate of a headman under the Hitotsubashi Tokugawa house. It is not connected to the Jōyō compound.
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Q&A
- Are the Detached Guest Rooms of the Hori Family Residence open to visitors?
- No. The Hori Family Residence is a private home. There is no interior access, and the detached rooms sit behind the main house where they cannot be seen from the public road.
- When were the Detached Guest Rooms of the Hori Family Residence built?
- Around Meiji 35 (1902), some four decades after the main house of 1859. They were registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 25 July 2011, registration number 26-0374.
- What makes the Detached Guest Rooms of the Hori Family Residence architecturally notable?
- The sukiya-influenced detailing of the principal room: a bark-retained log used in the toko alcove, the dark tropical hardwood tagayasan, a tsukeshoin writing alcove, and a small wall pierced with a fan-shaped opening.
- How large are the Detached Guest Rooms of the Hori Family Residence?
- The building runs 11 metres by 5.8 metres, with a floor area of 68 square metres. It contains two rooms, one of twelve and a half mats and one of eight, with a veranda along the north and west sides.
- What is worth visiting near the Hori Family Residence in Jōyō City?
- The Jōyō City Museum of History and Folklore is five minutes south of Terada Station, open 10:00 to 17:00 and closed Mondays, 200 yen. The main hall of Mito Shrine, an Important Cultural Property of 1448, stands 1.3 kilometres east and is freely accessible.
Basic Information
| Name | Detached Guest Rooms of the Hori Family Residence (堀家住宅離れ座敷, Horike Jūtaku Hanare-zashiki) |
|---|---|
| Location | 67-1 Terada Chūdaishō, Jōyō City, Kyoto Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 26-0374 |
| Year Designated | Registered 25 July 2011 (70th registration round) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 11 m along the ridge, 5.8 m in depth; floor area 68 m²; timber, single storey, tiled irimoya roof |
| Owner | Private (owner name not published in the national database) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public. Not visible from the public road |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs): Horike Jūtaku Hanare-zashiki
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00008725
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties: Horike Jūtaku Shuoku (main house, for compound context)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00008724
- Jōyō City Board of Education: Cultural Properties
- https://www.kyoto-be.ne.jp/joyou-be/cms/?cat=76
- Jōyō City: History and Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.joyo.kyoto.jp/category/8-3-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html
Last verified: 2026.07.29