Tanaka Family Residence Main House

The Main House on the Wakayama Kaidō

The Tanaka Family Residence Main House (田中家住宅主屋, Tanaka-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a large merchant townhouse built in 1896 on the old Wakayama Kaidō highway in Iitakacho Hase, Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 2, 2018. It is the centerpiece of the compound of the Tanaka family, who ran the secondary official inn of the Hase post town in the Edo period.

It is a 2-storey timber building under a gabled, pantiled roof with a building area of 356 square metres, and the registration includes its attached wall. The house was extended in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods and renovated around 1955.

A Front Fit for the Largest House in Town

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Tanaka Family Residence Main House as a large Machiya of fine timber whose imposing front suits the biggest merchant house in the post town. It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, and with the front barn directly across the road it anchors the streetscape.

The house went up after the family closed its sake brewery in 1885 and turned to forestry, when the fourteenth head of the house, Tanaka Hikozaemon, rebuilt the compound. Most of the other buildings, the east storehouse and the earthen walls among them, followed in the years after.

Lattices, Mushiko Windows and a Deep Eave

The street front is what to study. The eaves are carried out on projecting beams in the Degeta-zukuri manner, and the lean-to roof over the ground floor carries a narrow weather screen. Latticework fills the ground floor; upstairs, slatted mushiko windows alternate with projecting lattice bays, and Mie Prefecture notes that the mushiko windows at each end of the upper floor are framed in a lobed mokkō outline.

Because the wide front stands right on the road, you can take it in end to end from the street. Step back to the front barn opposite and the rhythm of lattice and window becomes easier to read.

Seeing the Main House

The exterior of the Tanaka Family Residence Main House can be seen from the old highway. The Tanaka Family Museum, which shares the address of 213 Hase, opens part of the residence by reservation and leads its website with a photograph of the main house. It does not say which rooms are shown, and notes that only part of the house is open in order to protect the buildings, so ask what you can see when you book.