Former Nakazawa Family Residence (from Medeshima-Shiote, Natori City, Miyagi Prefecture)

A Farmhouse Moved Across the Plain

The Former Nakazawa Family Residence (旧中澤家住宅, Kyū-Nakazawa-ke Jūtaku, also written 中沢家) is a late Edo-period farmhouse now standing at 216-93 Yama, Tekurada, Natori City, Miyagi Prefecture, designated an Important Cultural Property on 21 May 1974.

Its original site was about 1.5 kilometres to the west, in Maenoda, Medeshima-Shiote, and the full designated name records that earlier location. Following designation the building was dismantled, moved, and reassembled in 1975 and 1976 within what is now Jūsanzuka Park, a large municipal sports ground on the ridge running through the middle of the city.

The setting takes some adjusting to. Baseball diamonds, tennis courts and an athletics track occupy most of the park. The farmhouse sits at one edge under its own trees, and a good number of Natori residents who use the park regularly have never noticed it. In April the cherry trees around it come into flower and the picnic crowds arrive, mostly without looking up at the thatch.

The Nakazawa family is said to have lived at Maenoda since the beginning of the early modern period, though nothing definite is known about its origins.

The Natori Type

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the building as a medium-sized farmhouse of the Sendai plain, with a four-room grid plan and an earth-floored work area, a type frequent in and around Natori. Thick round posts stand in the earth-floored section, and the register identifies these as characteristic of houses in the former Sendai domain.

The plan is called ta no ji gata, after the character 田, which shows four squares in a frame. Four rooms sit in a two-by-two arrangement alongside the doma, the beaten-earth working floor. What distinguishes the local variant is the treatment of the boundary. Between the doma and the everyday living room, the okami, there is no partition. The two run together as one space.

Three free-standing posts rise from the earth floor, each with a name: ushimochi-bashira, the ox-holding post; hoito-bashira, the beggar's post; and yomekakushi-bashira, the bride-hiding post. The names carry more household memory than the timbers themselves do, and their arrangement, taken with the open room layout, is what regional scholarship calls the Natori type.

Structure and Dimensions

The national register gives 16.5 metres along the ridge by 9.5 metres deep, hipped roof, thatched. Natori City records the same building as nine ken by five ken, which it converts to 16 by 9 metres, with a floor area of 136 square metres. The small divergence is a matter of measurement convention rather than disagreement about the building.

The structure is ishiba-date, its posts standing on foundation stones rather than being sunk into the ground, a technique that keeps timber out of contact with soil moisture.

Dating is less settled. The register places construction in the late Edo period, giving 1751 to 1829. Natori City, working from the building's features and lacking documentary evidence, proposes the second half of the eighteenth century. Miyagi Prefecture's own listing suggests the middle of that century. Since the designation rests on the national register, its range is the one to cite, but the reader should know that no construction record survives.

Visiting

Admission is free. The interior is opened on a seasonal schedule rather than daily, and the schedule is set year by year. In 2023 the house was open from 18 April to 14 November on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 10:00 to 15:30. Anyone planning a visit around a specific date should confirm the current year's arrangement with the Natori City Cultural Properties Section on 022-724-7176.

The exterior can be seen at any time from within the park, and photography is unrestricted. The view worth having is from the south, looking along the veranda toward the deep overhang of the thatch.

Parking is free, using the Jūsanzuka Park car parks, and there are public toilets in the park. From central Natori the drive takes under ten minutes. Sendai Airport is close, which makes this an unusually convenient piece of vernacular architecture to reach on a first or last day in Japan.

Nearby

The Natori City Museum of History and Folklore holds the context for this building and covers the archaeology and folk life of the district. Also within reach is the Horaguchi Family Residence, another Important Cultural Property farmhouse and the fuller expression of the Natori type. Raijinyama Kofun, one of the largest keyhole tombs in the Tohoku region, lies nearby as well.

Visiting on a weekday morning outside cherry blossom season gives the house to yourself. The park will be busy with school sport; the farmhouse will be silent.