Suzunoya Heritage Preservation Society Former Office

What Is the Suzunoya Heritage Preservation Society Former Office?

The Suzunoya Heritage Preservation Society Former Office (鈴屋遺蹟保存会旧事務所, Suzunoya Iseki Hozonkai Kyū Jimusho) is a single-storey timber office building put up in 1909 on the Matsusaka Castle ruins in Tonomachi, Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 31 July 2007.

It was built as the base of the society that cared for Motoori Norinaga's house when the house was moved onto the castle's Inkyo-maru enclosure. Since 1988 it has been used as a tea room named Oshokaku (桜松閣), and local tourism notices usually call it by that name.

An Office That Chose Timber Over Brick

The Former Office was registered as number 24-0063, as a model of its type. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles it out as a valuable example of an office designed in the modern Japanese manner.

The Motoori Norinaga Memorial Museum records that a brick, Western-style single-storey office was on the table at first. The design chosen instead was a timber building with a hip-and-gable roof, entered on the long side, with a curved karahafu gable over the front porch. The working drawings were by Okuno Eizo, a building officer with the Grand Shrine of Ise administration, under the supervision of Tsuchiya Junichi, a professor at Nagoya Higher Technical School.

The museum also notes that part of the list of donors to the society is still displayed in the Suzunoya Heritage Preservation Society Former Office. Money came from across Japan, led by wealthy families with Matsusaka roots such as the Mitsui, Ozu Seizaemon and Otani Kahei.

The Karahafu Porch and the Plan

The building measures 7 bays by 4 (Ketayuki and Harima) and covers 117 square meters. The roof is Irimoya-zukuri, hipped below and gabled above, laid with Sangawara-buki pantiles, and the front faces southeast.

The porch at the center of the front is the part to study. Its roof is a karahafu, the undulating bow-shaped gable of Japanese temple and palace gates, sheathed in copper. Matsusaka City points out that its details are modeled on Daibutsuyō, the muscular carpentry style of the early Kamakura period, which gives the porch a weight unusual in an office. A single copper curve stands out against a broad roof of grey pantiles.

Behind the porch is an entrance hall. A Western-style reading room takes the southwest end and a ten-mat Zashiki reception room the northwest. Only the reading room breaks from the Japanese scheme, a sign that the building was meant to receive people who came to consult Norinaga's papers.

From Office to Tea Room

The Suzunoya Heritage Preservation Society Former Office stopped being an office when the Motoori Norinaga Memorial Museum opened in 1970. Matsusaka City says it then housed local history displays and the editorial office of the official city history, and reopened in 1988 as the Oshokaku tea room.

The museum's history includes a staff recollection of clearing the building for repairs around 1988 and finding box after box of envelopes, each marked with a street, a name and a sum: small donations from Matsusaka residents toward the museum building.

Visiting

The Suzunoya Heritage Preservation Society Former Office stands within the visiting area of the museum and Norinaga's house, and the garden in front is normally entered on the combined museum ticket. For a 2022 evening event the Matsusaka tourism association stated that Oshokaku could be seen from outside only. Check at the museum desk whether the interior is open and whether photography is allowed.

Since the building faces southeast, view the porch head-on from the southeast side of the garden. In the morning the sun falls on the front, and the copper karahafu reads clearly against the gable end of the main roof behind it.