Hiramatsu Family Residence Small Parlor

A One-Room Parlor Set Apart from the House

The Hiramatsu Family Residence Small Parlor (平松家住宅小座敷, Hiramatsu-ke Jūtaku Shōzashiki) is a single-storey timber reception room built in 1916 in Obuse, Nagano Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 28 October 2011.

It stands as a separate building south of the main house, linked to it by a covered passage. At 3.7 by 4.0 metres, with a building area of 18 square metres, it is both the smallest and the newest of the 8 registered buildings of the Hiramatsu Family Residence.

The roof is a simple gable (Kirizuma-zukuri) in pan tiles (Sangawara-buki), with a lean-to extension (Geya) projecting from the north side, the side facing the main house.

Care Lavished on a Small Room

Inside, the Hiramatsu Family Residence Small Parlor has a toko, the decorative alcove better known as a Tokonoma, with low cupboards called jibukuro beside it. A sunken hearth is cut into the floor, and the ceiling is a funazoko-tenjō, raised along the centre and sloping to each side like the inverted hull of a boat.

An alcove, a hearth and a shaped ceiling in a single room of this size add up to what the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls careful workmanship. The agency describes the building as a reception room that records part of the life of a farming household in the Taisho era. The main house already had formal rooms; this was a further, separate place for entertaining guests.

A Measured Distance from Daily Life

What makes the Hiramatsu Family Residence Small Parlor interesting is its relationship with the main house. Nearly half a century or more after the large late-Edo house was built, the family added in 1916 a free-standing room of just 18 square metres.

It shares no wall with the house. The covered passage keeps a deliberate gap between the everyday rooms and the room for guests, and that gap is the idea behind the building.

Rather than rebuilding the main house on a bigger scale, the household added one small, carefully finished room outside it. The Small Parlor can be read as an example of that way of improving a home.

Can You See the Hiramatsu Family Residence Small Parlor?

The Hiramatsu Family Residence Small Parlor sits inside the compound, south of the main house and away from the road, so expect it to be hard or impossible to see from outside.

The alcove and boat-hull ceiling are not open to view either. The Hiramatsu Family Residence is a private home and the grounds cannot be entered.

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