Yusa Family Residence (Naruko Onsen Baba)

A hot-spring farmstead registered building by building

The Yusa Family Residence (Naruko Onsen Baba) is a farmstead in the Baba district of Naruko Onsen, Ōsaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, made up of a main house from Meiji 10 to 19 (1877 to 1886) and five outbuildings from the Meiji to mid-Showa periods; on 11 December 1998 each of the six was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The six are the main house, a plank storehouse (itagura), a bathhouse fed by the local hot spring, a miso room, a materials shed and a stone storage cellar (muro). They carry consecutive registration numbers, 04-0005 to 04-0010, were added in the 15th round of registrations announced on 25 December 1998, and all qualified for their contribution to the historic landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the main house to 1877 to 1886, the plank storehouse to 1885 on the evidence of its ridge tablet, the miso room to the Taisho period, the cellar to around 1935 and the materials shed to around 1945. The bathhouse is the odd one out: the Agency gives around 1936, while Ōsaki City's own list gives around 1878, a gap of more than half a century.

How the farmstead is laid out

At its centre is a large main house with a stable built into a broad earthen-floored Doma. The Agency's note describes that combination as typical of farmhouses in this district, which was once known for horse breeding.

The bathhouse is attached to the east face of the main house and the miso room stands to its west. The materials shed lines up south of the miso room, and east of that, cut into a step in the ground, the stone cellar opens its mouth. The plank storehouse stands apart on the east side of the site.

A bath using hot-spring water, miso making, firewood and building materials, pickled vegetables: each outbuilding answers to a concrete part of daily life. Because even the smallest buildings were registered, the Yusa Family Residence records how a farm household lived in a hot-spring district as a whole, not just in its principal house.

Visiting and getting there

The Yusa Family Residence (Naruko Onsen Baba) is private property. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives no owner, and neither the Agency nor Ōsaki City lists open days or a way to arrange a visit. Please do not enter the grounds uninvited.

The nearest station is Naruko-Gotenyu on the JR Rikuu East Line, about 1 kilometre away in a straight line. Naruko Onsen Station, in the centre of the spa town, is about 2.6 kilometres away.

A separate registered building with the same name, another Yusa Family Residence Main House, registered in 1997, stands in the Yōgai district of Naruko Onsen, about 1 kilometre to the southeast. It is a different entry.

Photographs of each building are published on the Cultural Heritage Online portal and in the Agency database. For questions about cultural properties in the city, contact the Cultural Properties Division of the Ōsaki City Board of Education in Furukawa Nanokamachi (tel. 0229-23-2214).