Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room

What Is the Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room?

The Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room (旧冨田家住宅奥座敷, Kyū Tomita-ke Jūtaku Okuzashiki) is a single-storey wooden wing of tatami reception rooms built in the early Showa period (1926 to 1945) at the western edge of the Tomita timber merchants' plot in Ōaza Sakurai, Sakurai City, Nara Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 24, 2021. It has a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki tiles and a building area of 54 square meters.

Registered as number 29-0320 for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and renovated in 2018, the Inner Room adjoins the west side of the Annex. The Agency for Cultural Affairs values it for the way its sukiya detailing, with plenty of wickerwork and bamboo, sets it apart from its neighbor.

Deep Eaves Lightened with Copper

The roof of the Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room is tiled, but the verge at the gable ends and the pent roofs are sheathed in Dōban-buki copper. Thin copper sheet makes the edges look slender where heavy tiles would make them thick, so the deep eaves of the Inner Room read as light rather than heavy.

The difference shows when you compare it with the Annex next door. The 2-storey Annex presents a crisp tiled roof, while the single-storey Tomita Inner Room stretches its eaves low and far and keeps their edges fine.

Staggered Rooms and a Raised Ceiling

The Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room has two rooms, a 6-mat room on the east and an 8-mat room on the west, set diagonally offset from each other in a staggered plan known in Japanese as gankō, after the pattern of geese in flight. A veranda runs along the east and north sides. The 8-mat room has an alcove, and the center of its ceiling is raised a step in a coved ceiling.

The Agency names the sukiya design, with its wickerwork and bamboo, as the building's defining trait. The inn Kura no Yado Ōrintei describes a unit called Seifū with a bamboo-latticed entrance, a sunken kotatsu table in the 6-mat room, and an 8-mat room with an alcove post, staggered Chigaidana shelves, a Tsukeshoin desk alcove and an Ajiro-tenjō wickerwork ceiling; the Inner Room appears to be that unit. The inn calls the rooms shoin-style, whereas the Agency places them in the sukiya tradition, so the two descriptions do not quite agree.

The Inner Room also links the house together. According to the Agency, the Inner Storehouse in the northwest corner is entered from the Inner Room's corridor, and a covered passage leads from it to the Tea Room. The inn says the storehouse behind Seifū has been turned into a bedroom.

Visiting the Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room

The Former Tomita Family Residence Inner Room is used as an inn unit, so its interior appears to be open only to overnight guests, and no arrangement for drop-in visits was found. Standing at the western edge of the plot, it may not be visible from the public road; this has not been confirmed.

If you stay, look up at the raised ceiling of the 8-mat room and, from the veranda, at how thin the copper edges of the eaves appear. Stepping across to the Annex afterward shows how the same house used formal shoin rooms and relaxed sukiya rooms side by side, with the Tomita Inner Room on the sukiya side.