Hiramatsu Family Residence Main House

A Thatched Farmhouse with a Tiled Wing

The Hiramatsu Family Residence Main House (平松家住宅主屋, Hiramatsu-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-storey timber farmhouse of the late Edo period in Obuse, Nagano Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 28 October 2011. The national database dates it to between 1830 and 1868.

It stands in the middle of the Hiramatsu plot on the edge of Obuse town, facing south. At 23.4 metres long and 8.8 metres deep, with a building area of 251 square metres, it is by far the largest of the 8 registered buildings on the site.

The house is really two roof forms joined together. The main body carries a hipped roof (Yosemune-zukuri) of thatch (Kayabuki), now protected by a temporary sheet-iron cover. Attached to its east end is a wing with a hip-and-gable roof (Irimoya-zukuri) laid with interlocking pan tiles (Sangawara-buki).

From a Four-Room Core to a House for Guests

The plan of the Hiramatsu Family Residence Main House starts from the yomadori layout, in which the living area is divided into 4 rooms arranged like the Japanese character for a rice field, 田. It is regarded as a common arrangement in farmhouses of the early modern period.

Here that core has been enlarged with a proper entrance hall and formal zashiki rooms, giving the household a distinct suite for receiving visitors alongside the rooms used for family life and work. The Agency for Cultural Affairs reads this plan as a record of how the Japanese farmhouse developed.

The house was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. Its great roof, anchoring a compound of storehouses and work buildings, is the centrepiece of that rural scene.

Reading the Roofs

The thing to look at on the Hiramatsu Family Residence Main House is the roof. Even under its sheet-iron jacket, the hipped main roof keeps the bulk of a thatched roof: a steep pitch, a heavy mass and deep eaves.

The tiled wing to the east is quite different in character, with pan tiles and a triangular gable showing at each end. Grass and clay, hip and hip-and-gable, sit side by side on one building, and being able to compare them in a single glance is the most distinctive feature of the exterior.

Seeing the Hiramatsu Family Residence Main House

The Hiramatsu Family Residence Main House is a lived-in private home and its interior is not open. Because it stands in the centre of the plot, the view from the road is of its roof rising behind the kurumaya, south storehouse and silkworm rearing house that line the frontage.

Keep your attention on the outline and scale of the roof, and stay on the public road; the grounds cannot be entered.

Directions and the general conditions for visiting are on the Hiramatsu Family Residence page.