Ogawa Family Kitashirakawa Villa Front Gate

Ogawa Family Kitashirakawa Villa Front Gate: The Entrance to a Fujii Koji House

The Ogawa Family Kitashirakawa Villa Front Gate (小川家北白川別邸表門) is a timber bracketed gate built in 1934 in Kitashirakawa Ogura-cho, Sakyo Ward, Kyoto City, and was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2020.

It forms the front of the Ogawa family's villa in the Kitashirakawa residential district. The main house, registered on the same day, is a retirement residence designed by the architect Fujii Koji. The gate was registered on 3 April 2020.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists a timber gate with a copper roof, a frontage of 1.8 metres and screen walls on both sides. Its description calls it a gate three bays wide, which suggests three narrow bays side by side.

Why It Was Registered

The agency praises the gate for its neat, restrained design, which gives an early Showa house a proper front.

Fujii Koji, who designed the main house, is known for his search for a house suited to Japan's climate. The agency says his style shows in the main house in the free, linear combination of Japanese elements in both the Japanese- and Western-style rooms, and especially in the inventive alcoves. The Ogawa Family Kitashirakawa Villa Front Gate was put up in the same year, 1934, as the entrance to that house.

What to Look For

The gate stands at the southeast corner of the lot. The central bay holds a plank door and the side bays are plank walls. Widely spaced vertical slats fill the transom, and brackets projecting from the end posts carry the purlin under a copper roof.

The floor of the gateway is paved in stone, with a large boulder set in the centre, so anyone entering steps across it. The contrast between the plain, straight joinery and the natural mass of the stone is the gate's defining feature.

Look at the spacing of the transom slats and where the brackets meet the purlin to see the quiet, carefully judged proportions.

Viewing the Gate

The villa is at 50-10 Kitashirakawa Ogura-cho, Sakyo Ward. No official information on public access to the grounds or buildings could be found. Because the gate stands at the southeast corner of the lot, its exterior appears to be visible from the road.

The area is residential. Do not linger in front of the gate or enter the grounds, and if you take photographs, be considerate of residents and neighbours.