Yachiyo Entrance Building

The Front of Yachiyo

The Yachiyo Entrance Building (八千代玄関棟) is the entrance and guest-room wing of a kappo ryokan of the early Showa period (1926 to 1945) in Tonomachi, Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on August 1, 2016 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a two-storey timber building with a tile roof and a building area of 215 square metres, renovated in 1957; registration number 24-0232.

A Gabled Front Set Back from the Street

The Yachiyo Entrance Building stands a little back from the street on the east side of the Yachiyo plot in the old castle town of Matsusaka (Agency for Cultural Affairs). It shows the gable end of a hip-and-gable roof to the east, and the entrance is set beneath it. This is the face of Yachiyo; the great hall building joins it from behind at right angles.

The ground floor holds the lobby and other rooms, and upstairs the guest rooms open off a central corridor (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The official Yachiyo website says the seven rooms on this upper floor are the ones used for overnight stays, with baths and toilets kept outside the rooms.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs singled out the guest rooms of the Yachiyo Entrance Building, where wickerwork ceilings and timbers left to show their age give each room its own design and mood, and registered it as a model of design. The Yachiyo Entrance Building was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2016.

The official Yachiyo website makes the same point: no two rooms are built alike. It mentions hand-carved transoms, wickerwork and reed-blind ceilings and single lengths of polished log used as head rails, and explains that the building was a merchant's private house converted for the business, not one planned as a restaurant.

What to Look For

From outside, look at the hip-and-gable end of the Yachiyo Entrance Building facing the street, and the entrance beneath it.

Guests staying overnight can compare the upstairs rooms, whose ceilings and head rails change from one to the next. According to the official website, the framed calligraphy over the room doors was left by writers and artists who stayed here.

Visiting

The Yachiyo Entrance Building is the entrance and guest-room wing of a working kappo ryokan, so the interior is seen as a dining or overnight guest with a booking (official Yachiyo website). No official notice of tours for sightseers or of a photography policy was found. The exterior can be seen from the street in Tonomachi; directions and booking conditions are on the Yachiyo page.