Sato Family Residence Wooden Detached Building

What Is the Sato Family Residence Wooden Detached Building?

The Sato Family Residence Wooden Detached Building (佐藤家住宅木造別棟, Satō-ke Jūtaku Mokuzō Bettō) is a 2-storey separate wing with a stone ground floor and a timber upper floor, believed to date from the early Meiji period, in Nishidomari-cho, Nagasaki City, Nagasaki Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 5, 1997. It has a tiled roof and a building area of 26 square meters.

Among the five registered buildings of the Sato Family Residence, this is the hanare, the detached wing, standing south of the main house. Unlike the house and warehouses that line the streets, it sits deep inside the lot. Together with Stone Warehouse A, it belongs to the older of the two building phases on the site.

Timber Floor on a Stone Base

The Wooden Detached Building is built in two contrasting layers: a ground floor of laid stone, and above it a timber upper storey. Despite the "wooden" in its name, only the top half is wood.

Japanese houses were almost always built of timber, and stone dwellings are rare. The Agency for Cultural Affairs counts the Sato detached building among the few residential buildings in Japan constructed partly in stone. Stone-walled warehouses were known in Nagasaki, but putting a family's living rooms on a stone base, as here, is unusual.

A Light, Sukiya-Style Upper Floor

The upper storey of the Sato Family Residence Wooden Detached Building is framed with slender members. The Agency notes that, in contrast to the thick posts and beams of the main house, the wing uses fine timbers in a sukiya-inspired manner, the refined, deliberately understated style associated with tea-house architecture.

Japanese carpenters speak of kiwari, the proportioning of posts and beams. Keep the members thin and a building looks light and delicate. Here that lightness sits directly on heavy masonry, so the two floors of one small building pull in opposite directions.

Robust for the main house, airy for the retreat: matching the design to a building's role is very much a sukiya habit, and comparing the Sato main house with this wing makes the difference plain.

Dating and Registration of the Sato Detached Building

No building record survives for the Wooden Detached Building. The Agency dates it to the early Meiji period from the weathering of its stone, which makes it older than the main house of around 1899.

It was registered under the criterion of being difficult to reproduce, as number 42-0003. The combination of a masonry ground floor with a sukiya-style upper floor, and the rarity of stone in Japanese domestic building, are what earned the Sato detached building its listing.

Seeing the Sato Wooden Detached Building

The Sato Family Residence Wooden Detached Building is part of a private home, and its interior is not open to the public (checked September 2026). The Agency's notes do not describe it as facing a road, and because it stands behind the main house, little of it is likely to be visible from outside. The grounds are closed, so please do not try to peer in. Directions are on the Sato Family Residence (Nagasaki) page.