Raku Family Residence Main House

Raku Family Residence Main House: A Townhouse Outside, Sukiya Within

The Raku Family Residence Main House (樂家住宅主屋, Raku-ke jūtaku shuoku) is the two-storey timber house at the centre of the Raku potters' compound on Aburanokoji Street in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto; it is dated to the early Meiji period and was registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2007.

It is by far the biggest of the nine registered buildings on the lot: 11 bays long and 7 bays deep (a bay, or Ken, being the standard span between posts), with a building area of 263 square metres under a gabled roof of interlocking pantiles. It stands near the middle of the site, set a little toward the street.

Its age is not fixed. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the early Meiji period, while the Raku Museum says the family's present house was rebuilt in 1855. The Agency's record also notes that the building was extended and remodelled in 2006.

Why the Main House Was Registered

The Raku Family Residence Main House was listed under the criterion for structures that would be difficult to reproduce. The Agency's short description turns on a contrast: seen from outside, it has the plain front of a Kyoto townhouse; inside, the rooms are worked in the sukiya manner, the pared-back, carefully crafted style that grew out of tea-house building.

Kyoto City made the same point when it named the property a Landscape Important Building, praising the way a townhouse frame had absorbed so much fine sukiya craftsmanship. For a family whose trade is making bowls for the tea ceremony, the pairing makes sense.

How the Rooms Are Arranged

Everyday circulation runs along the south side. The entrance is in the south-east corner, and four reception rooms follow behind it. The kitchen occupies the south-west corner, and an earth-floored passage, the tōri-doma, runs through the house along the south.

That passage is standard in Kyoto townhouses. Four formal rooms are not: they suggest a household that expected a steady stream of tea people, dealers and patrons.

The Raku Family Residence Main House also works as the hinge of the compound. The Sokantei tea room adjoins it on the north, its altar room opening onto the main house corridor. To the north-west, the clothing storehouse connects through a 6-mat anteroom on its south side. And the middle gate and fence that run in from the front gate end here, so that guests and family alike are routed toward this building.

Seeing the Main House

The Raku Family Residence Main House is the family's home and is not open to visitors. From Aburanokoji Street you can see the gate, the high wall and the garden trees behind it, but not the house itself at close range.

That screened street front is part of what Kyoto City set out to protect, so if you stop to look, keep to the side and mind the neighbours. The bowls made by every generation of the family can be seen next door at the Raku Museum; directions and opening hours are on the Raku Family Residence page.