Shiohara Family Residence Gate

About the Shiohara Family Residence Gate

The Shiohara Family Residence Gate (塩原家住宅門, Shiohara-ke Jūtaku Mon) is an early Taisho-period front gate at the Shiohara homestead in Imai, Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 2, 2004. It stands toward the east side of the plot, with a Sodobei wing wall on either side.

Beyond the Shiohara gate lie the main house at the center of the homestead and the rice storehouse standing in front of it. Of the four registered buildings, this is the one a visitor arriving from outside meets first.

Why It Was Registered

The Shiohara Family Residence Gate was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as plain in its overall build but broad in its frontage, with a dignity that matches the grand main house, and calls it indispensable to the look of the property.

Nothing about it is showy. Its value lies in proportion: a width in keeping with the big house behind it, and a single run of roof tiles carried over the gate and both wing walls, so that the whole entrance reads as one calm, solid front.

An Interlocking Ridge and Two-Tone Wing Walls

The Sangawara-buki pantile roof of the Shiohara Family Residence Gate continues without a break over the wing walls. The ridge is laid in the wachigai pattern, in which half-round tiles are set in alternating directions so that, seen from the side, they form a chain of interlocking rings. Look up at the ridge and the small shadows of that pattern give an otherwise simple gate something to hold the eye.

The wing walls change finish halfway up. The lower part is clad in wooden boards, and above that the wall is coated in white Shikkui lime plaster. Boards protect the base, where rain splashes back from the ground, while the plaster keeps the upper wall bright, and the result is a clear two-band contrast of brown timber and white.

The Agency's register records the Shiohara gate as a two-story timber structure with a tiled roof and an opening 1.8 meters wide. Its description, however, speaks of a broad frontage, and the register does not explain how that wording relates to the 1.8-meter figure. It may refer to the full width of the gate together with its wing walls, but this has not been confirmed.

Visiting the Shiohara Family Residence Gate

The Shiohara Family Residence Gate is the entrance to a private home, and you cannot pass through it onto the property. If you look at it from outside, take care not to block the road or the residents' comings and goings.

Start with the ring pattern along the ridge, then let your eye drop to the line where boards meet plaster on the wing walls. That is where the care in its finishing shows. How much of the gate can be seen from a public road was not stated in the sources consulted. Directions are on the Shiohara Family Residence page.