Tanaka Honke Museum Former Main House

What the Tanaka Honke Museum Former Main House Is

The Tanaka Honke Museum Former Main House (田中本家博物館旧主屋) is the early Meiji-period residence at the centre of the Tanaka merchant estate in Suzaka City, Nagano Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 19 September 2003.

It stands a little south of the middle of the estate and faces west. The building is really two wings joined by an earth-floored passage: a living wing to the north and a kitchen wing to the south. Built of timber, mostly single-storey with a second floor over part of it, it covers 200 square metres. This is where the family lived and ran the business.

The word "former" simply reflects that nobody lives here now; the house is preserved as part of the museum.

Why the Former Main House Was Registered

The Tanaka Honke Museum Former Main House was registered as serving as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out its generous, commanding form, fitting for the central building of a great merchant house, and an exterior full of variety.

The living wing is a two-storey block under a hipped roof with its ridge running east to west. The kitchen wing turns ninety degrees, with a gabled roof on a north-south ridge and a lean-to Geya eave across the front. Two blocks, two roof types, two directions: walk around the house and the roofline keeps rearranging itself.

The roofs are laid in pantiles. The ground-floor walls are finished in white lime plaster, while the upper walls are left as rough clay, a change of texture that softens the bulk of a large building.

What to Look For: The Earthen Passage

Start on the west front and compare the hipped living wing on your left with the gabled kitchen wing on your right. Next to the plain gables of the storehouses, the stepped roofs of the Former Main House look almost theatrical.

The earthen passage between the wings was the working spine of the house, linking the kitchen with the private rooms. Behind the kitchen, the Okaru Nikai juts out to the east; from the living wing a covered corridor runs east to the Reception Hall. The Tanaka Honke Museum Former Main House is the knot that ties the inner buildings together.

A study published by the National Museum of Japanese History records that the family residence burned in the Suzaka uprising of 1870. The early Meiji date assigned to the present house fits the rebuilding that followed.

Visiting the Former Main House

Because it sits in the middle of the estate, you pass the house on the way from the Front Gate to the garden. The exterior can be seen on any opening day. How much of the interior is open depends on current exhibitions and events, so ask at reception.

From the large garden to the north you get the other face of the building: the upper floor and hipped roof of the living wing seen across the planting. Hours, admission and directions are on the Tanaka Honke Museum page.