Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum (Former Kawai Kanjiro Residence) Main House

What Is the Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum Main House?

The Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum (Former Kawai Kanjiro Residence) Main House (河井寬次郎記念館（旧河井寬次郎邸）主屋) is a two-storey timber house built in 1937 on a lane in Kaneicho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto City, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2000.

The potter Kawai Kanjiro built it as his home and place of work, and the design is credited to him. The tiled roof is hipped (Yosemune-zukuri), the gable end faces the street (Tsumairi), and the front carries projecting beams under the eaves in the Degeta-zukuri manner. It covers 148 m². Kyoto City records that his elder brother Kawai Zenzaemon, a carpenter from their hometown of Yasugi in Shimane Prefecture, built it.

Why the Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum Main House Was Registered

The Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum Main House was registered as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to Kyoto Machiya details such as fine senbon lattices and low yarai fences, combined with a board-floored hall built around an Irori hearth, timber finished to look aged, and lacquered doors and screens. Together, it says, they express Kawai's own view of what a house should be.

Kyoto City reads the hipped roof as Kawai's adaptation of the large gable-entry townhouses of Yasugi, softened to sit comfortably in a Kyoto street. The projecting front beams are thought to reflect his admiration for rural houses, a theme he shared with Yanagi Soetsu and Hamada Shoji in the mingei folk craft movement. A carpenter's son turned potter brought the house form of his birthplace into a Kyoto lane.

What to Look For

Start outside. Both floors of the facade are fitted with plain lattices, but they change across the front: on the ground floor the southern part is close-set like a shop-house lattice, while the northern part and the upper floor have wider spacing between the uprights. The walls are finished in Kyoto earth plaster.

Inside, the plan opens around a central board-floored hall rising through both storeys as a Fukinuke void, with rooms arranged around it and the staircase climbing out of the hall itself. Kyoto City notes how unusual this is for a Kyoto townhouse, where rooms normally run back in a line beside a passage.

Look at the floor of the Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum Main House hall too. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that splitting the floor into two levels is a device shared with the earlier pottery studio, where the lower level served for chair work and the higher one for sitting on the floor.

Visiting the Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum Main House

The Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum Main House serves as the museum's entrance and is open on museum days. Kawai's furniture and works are set out much as they were when the family lived here, and visitor guides describe the upstairs study and living rooms as part of the route.

The latticed front can be seen from the lane at any time, but the lane is narrow and used by cars, so step to the side if you stop. Opening hours, admission and directions are on the Kawai Kanjiro Memorial Museum page.