Yamada Ryokan New Building

About the Yamada Ryokan New Building

The Yamada Ryokan New Building (山田旅館新館, Yamada Ryokan Shinkan) is a three-storey timber guest wing at Otari Onsen in Otari Village, Nagano Prefecture, built in 1914 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 12, 2001, under number 20-0095.

Its hip-and-gable roof, in the Irimoya-zukuri style, is clad in sheet metal, and the building area is 250 square meters. The inn calls the Yamada Ryokan New Building the Taisho-kan, after the Taisho era in which it was built, and treats it as the signature building of the house.

Why It Was Registered: A Full Three Storeys, Bent in a Dogleg

The Yamada Ryokan New Building was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as joined to the west gable of the Bathroom, running west and then turning north in a shallow dogleg. Each floor is wrapped by its own Hisashi, a narrow pent roof, and the building rises a full three storeys under its hip-and-gable roof, which was first covered with boards.

East of the Bathroom stands a row building, the nagaya, so that nagaya, bathhouse and guest wing form one continuous line. The Agency credits that line with giving a lone mountain inn the look of a spa-town street, and the tall New Building closes it at the western end.

The Agency records the master carpenter of the Yamada Ryokan New Building as Yamagishi Ichitaro. The inn names him too, as a renowned local temple carpenter.

What to Look For: Log Posts and a Corridor That Changes Direction

According to the inn, the Yamada Ryokan New Building is framed with round-log through-posts, single timbers that run through more than one floor, and with beams of Keyaki (Japanese zelkova). Those posts carry the whole stack of guest floors.

Where the building bends, corridors meeting at different angles are joined in an L, and the inn points to the difficult joinery needed there. Once you have seen the dogleg from outside, stand at that corner inside and look up at how the ceiling and posts are fitted together. The Agency calls the plan a dogleg while the inn calls it an L, so the turn may be gentler than a right angle.

Outside, the pent roofs on every floor draw a series of horizontal lines. The Agency notes that each floor has a balustrade along its outer face, with sliding windows now fitted outside it as well. Together with the change from boards to sheet metal on the roof, these are the adjustments that have kept a 1914 building usable through Otari winters.

The Yamada Ryokan New Building was damaged in a major earthquake and has since been repaired. The inn says the work kept the warmth of the original timber and the character of the building as it was first built.

Visiting the Yamada Ryokan New Building

Rooms in the Yamada Ryokan New Building are still let to guests, so only overnight guests can go inside. The inn describes the rooms as opening onto the corridor through fusuma sliding doors, with shared toilets on each floor. No visits for sightseers are offered.

The exterior can be seen from within the grounds. Find the point where it meets the Bathroom and follow the Yamada Ryokan New Building as it swings north, and the dogleg plan becomes clear. The website gives no rules on photography indoors, so ask the staff first (checked October 9, 2026).