Tondaya Annex

A Showa Wing Built for Guests

Tondaya Annex (冨田屋離れ, Tondaya Hanare) is a single-storey wooden guest wing built around 1935 at a merchant house in the Nishijin district of Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on 23 August 1999. Tile-roofed, with a building area of 89 square metres, it stands at the very back of the Tondaya property, facing the garden.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs says it was built after the lot was extended westward, and dates it to the Showa 10s (1935 to 1944); the family's website gives 1935 for the extension, and Kyoto City dates the tea room to around 1935. Where the main house was built for trade and family life, the Tondaya Annex was built for entertaining guests.

Completing a Grand Merchant House

The Tondaya Annex was registered as a model of architectural form. It combines three parts: a detached reception room with an anteroom, a parlour for receiving callers, and a tea room (Chashitsu). A veranda (Engawa) runs along the south side, facing the garden, and on the north the annex adjoins the treasure storehouse and the middle storehouse.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it indispensable for showing how an upper-class merchant house was composed. Shop at the front, living quarters and storehouses in the middle, garden and guest rooms at the back: read that way, the Tondaya compound gained its full merchant-house form only with this Showa addition. The family's website describes the annex as three buildings, the reception room, parlour and tea room, while the registration counts it as one.

The Rakuju Tea Room and a Room for Noh

The tea room of the Tondaya Annex was named Rakuju by the ninth grand master of the Mushakojisenke school of tea, whose headquarters is known as Kankyuan; the family's website adds that the building was made under his supervision. Kyoto City describes it as a sukiya-style room (see Sukiya-zukuri): a plain crawl-through entrance (nijiriguchi), an alcove post of red pine (Tokobashira), and a ceiling divided between checkerboard boarding and reed matting. Look up and you can find the line where one ceiling finish gives way to the other.

The annex's main reception room is described as large enough for Noh to be danced in. The family's website says the house has a Noh room, and relates that the first Tondaya Tobei, back in Fushimi, was versed in tea and Noh and was a patron of the Kongo school.

The official VR map includes four scenes here: the annex, its inner reception room, the tea room and a tea room with table seating.

Visiting the Annex

The interior of the Tondaya Annex is seen on the guided townhouse tour included in Tondaya's reserved experience programs. According to the English booking page, the Rakuju tea room is used as the special tea room for tea ceremony experiences, so you can choose to take tea there. For those who find kneeling difficult, a table-seated tea room is also available.

Because the tea rooms and reception rooms are working spaces, other guests may be using them during your visit. Socks are required indoors. The annex stands deep inside the property and cannot be seen from the street. Booking and directions are covered on the Tondaya page.