Matsuura Family Residence Gatepost and Stone Wall

Thirty-Four Metres of Stone Along a Village Lane

The Matsuura Family Residence Gateposts and Stone Wall (松浦家住宅門柱及び石塀, Matsuura-ke Jūtaku Monchū oyobi Ishibei) is a late Meiji-period stone boundary wall with two gates at Kashiwabaru in Miyazaki City, Miyazaki Prefecture, added to Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 February 2016.

The wall runs along the eastern edge of the property for a total length of thirty-four metres, standing about 1.7 metres high. Two openings are cut into it. The front gate has a span of 3.1 metres, the rear gate 3.2 metres, and at each the mason set stone pillars 2.3 metres tall with a capstone laid across the top and carving worked into the face.

The national database dates the work to the late Meiji era, a range given as 1898 to 1912. Unlike the storehouse behind it, which carries an inscribed date of 1905, the wall has no year cut into it.

An enclosure is not usually the thing that gets registered. Here it was.

Registered for What It Does to the Street

Japan's registration system for Tangible Cultural Properties, introduced in 1996, admits buildings and structures under one of three criteria. The Matsuura storehouse on this same site was accepted as work that could not easily be reproduced, a judgement about craft. The gateposts and wall were accepted under a different heading altogether: as a structure contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry ends by saying simply that it contributes to the appearance of the settlement.

The distinction is worth pausing on. One registration is about the object; the other is about what the object does to the space around it. A thirty-four metre run of dressed stone at the edge of a lane sets the width of the road, the line of sight, the surface a passer-by walks alongside. Remove it and the village reads differently, whatever else survives.

The registration classifies it under the category of other constructed works rather than buildings, and counts the whole assembly, two gates and the full length of wall, as a single unit. The registration number is 45-0083, granted in the eighty-third round on the same day as the storehouse. About two kilometres west at Tomiyoshi, the Dokiya Family Residence stone wall was registered in the same round on the same reasoning.

Kashiwabaru had the masons for this. The prefectural record notes that stoneworkers were once numerous around Takaoka to the west, and that stone storehouses remain in quantity through these villages.

Edo-giri Edges and Level Courses

The wall is built of cut stone laid in seisōzumi, level courses of even height running horizontally, the most disciplined and the most expensive way to build in stone. Rubble would have kept the rain out just as well.

Each block is finished in edo-giri. The technique cuts a narrow flat margin around the perimeter of the exposed face, running a true straight line along every edge, and leaves the field inside slightly proud. Stand close and the wall becomes a grid of framed panels; step back onto the road and the joints resolve into a set of horizontal lines that carry the eye along the lane.

At the gates, the pillars rise to 2.3 metres and take a kasaishi, a capstone set across the top like the coping of a lantern. The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry records ornament on the front face without naming it; the Miyazaki prefectural record describes it as shakujō carving, the same motif that appears beside the storehouse doorway, named for the ringed staff of a Buddhist pilgrim. The two accounts differ in how much they specify rather than contradicting each other.

Two gates rather than one is worth noticing. A front entrance for guests and formal comings and goings, a rear one for the working side of the household, carts and tools and the storehouse. The 3.2 metre rear span is fractionally the wider of the two, which tells you something about what actually needed to get through.

For visitors, this is the accessible half of the Matsuura property. The house and storehouse are private and closed, but the wall and gates face the public lane by definition, and looking at them from the road is exactly how they were meant to be seen. Photograph from the road, do not enter the gates, and keep in mind that a family lives behind them. Miyazaki Station is about six kilometres east in a straight line, under thirty minutes by car; bus services here are sparse, so drive or take a taxi. The Ikime Kofun Group, two kilometres north and freely open, makes the obvious companion stop.