Iida Family Residence Inner Gate

What the Inner Gate Is

The Iida Family Residence Inner Gate (飯田家住宅内門, Iida-ke Jūtaku Uchimon) is a late Meiji-period timber roofed gate in Toyoshina Takibe, Azumino City, Nagano Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2005. It opens in the earthen wall that encloses the garden southeast of the main house, and carries registration number 20-0248.

It stands just east of the main house's front and faces west, so it leads from the forecourt in front of the house eastward into the garden laid out before the reception wing.

The opening is 6 shaku (1.8 meters) wide under a tiled Kirizuma-zukuri roof, and a pair of plank doors hangs in it. The Agency for Cultural Affairs classes it as an ancillary structure rather than a building.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency describes the Iida Family Residence Inner Gate as facing the forecourt of the main house and forming the view of the estate's formal front.

Visitors from outside were first received at the southwest, where the gatehouse and its kabukimon gate controlled entry. Inside that, the inner gate marked a second threshold, from the forecourt into the garden. As the way into the reception wing's garden, it was kept small but given careful detailing.

What to Look For

The Iida Family Residence Inner Gate is a Munamon, a gate whose gabled roof rests on just two posts. With no back posts to clutter the view, the roof shows a clean outline from the front.

That roof has a slight upward curve toward the eaves, a gentle lift that gives a 6-shaku gate more presence than its size suggests.

The infill at the main ridge is decorated with shippō-tsunagi, a pattern of equal circles overlapping by a quarter, long used as an auspicious motif for harmony and prosperity. Of the estate's gates, this is the only one whose ornament the Agency records.

Viewing the Inner Gate

The Iida Family Residence Inner Gate stands inside a private residence, facing the forecourt of the main house, and is not open to visitors.

Because it faces west into the forecourt, its front is unlikely to be visible from any public road; at best the outline of its roof may show above the garden wall. Keep photography to what can be seen from the road.

How to reach the estate, and how to view it without intruding, is explained on the Iida Family Residence page.