Sato Family Residence Main House

A Big Farmhouse From the Dawn of Modern Japan

The Sato Family Residence Main House (佐藤家住宅主屋, Satō-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is an early Meiji-era farmhouse at the centre of the Satō estate in Chohoji (Chōhōji), Nagaokakyo, Kyoto Prefecture, home of a former village headman's family, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2008.

The house faces south from the middle of the lot. It measures 8 ken across by 6 and a half ken deep (a Ken is the traditional bay between posts). On paper it is a single-storey timber building, but a low loft known as Tsushi-nikai is tucked under the roof. That roof is a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri form laid with pantiles, and eaves run around all 4 sides. With a building area of 196 square metres, it is the largest of the 9 registered structures on the estate.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a large farmhouse reaching back to the very beginning of Japan's modern era. Kyoto Tōbunkai, the prefecture's association of registered-property owners, believes the house went up as part of a long run of rebuilding that renewed the family's storehouses between the late Edo period and the Meiji era.

Nine Rooms and a Formal Parlour

As first built, the eastern 2 and a half ken of the house were an earth-floored Doma, the working entrance hall. West of it, the raised living area was divided into 9 rooms in a 3-by-3 grid, a plan known as kokonoma-dori. Walking west from the doma, you would have passed from everyday rooms into rooms for receiving guests. A 9-room grid needs a house well above the size of an ordinary farmhouse.

The Sato Family Residence Main House was registered as a model of its type. The Agency praises the formality of its reception-room fittings, its carved Ranma transoms and its sliding doors and screens. Kyoto Tōbunkai adds that the formal rooms follow the Shoin-zukuri manner of samurai and temple reception halls, with transoms shaped like bamboo nodes, a treatment it calls unusual in a farmhouse.

A village headman had to host officials from the domain and other visitors of standing. The formal rooms set deep inside this big grid plan show, in timber and paper, what that duty looked like in daily life.

Roof Timbers From a Temple Kitchen?

Family tradition holds that the Satō household built the house partly with roof-frame timbers left over when Yoshiminedera, a temple on the Saigoku Kannon pilgrimage, rebuilt its Kuri, the priests' living and kitchen quarters.

According to Kyoto Tōbunkai, the roof timbers carry cut joints and notches that serve no purpose in their present positions, a sign that they were salvaged from another building. The association considers the story credible on that evidence. The Agency's description does not mention it, so it is best read as a family account supported by physical clues, not a documented fact.

None of this can be seen from outside. Still, it adds a layer to the Sato Family Residence Main House: under that broad hipped roof, old temple beams may be doing a second tour of duty.

Visiting

The Main House is still a family home, and its interior is not open to the public.

It stands in the middle of the lot, screened on the south by the Nagayamon Gate and the tsuiji wall, so the building cannot be seen in full from the street. Please do not look through the gate or enter the grounds, and keep any photography to the public road. There is no admission charge or booking system.