Former Tomita Family Residence Tea Room

What Is the Former Tomita Family Residence Tea Room?

The Former Tomita Family Residence Tea Room (旧冨田家住宅茶室, Kyū Tomita-ke Jūtaku Chashitsu) is a Chashitsu of three and a half tatami mats built in the early Showa period (1926 to 1945) in the northwest 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 is a single-storey wooden building with a tiled roof and a building area of 13 square meters.

Registered as number 29-0321 for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and renovated in 2018, the Tea Room stands east of the Inner Storehouse and is reached from the Inner Room by a covered passage. The table issued with the recommendation describes it as a properly built tea room of three and a half mats that shapes the northwest corner of the grounds.

A Small Roof with a Triangular Gable

The Former Tomita Family Residence Tea Room has a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki tiles, with only the eaves edged in Dōban-buki copper so that they can reach out deeply. On the south side a triangular Chidori-hafu gable gives the little roof a lively profile.

The Nijiriguchi, the low crawl-in entrance that makes every guest bow, opens toward the east end of the south wall. The deep-eaved south face under the gable is the front of the Tomita Tea Room, where guests coming through the garden take off their shoes and slip inside.

Bamboo, Bent Timber and Layered Ceilings

Inside, the Former Tomita Family Residence Tea Room is full of careful touches. The alcove post is a length of bamboo, and the chinkuguri, a small opening cut into the base of the wall beside the alcove, is framed with a naturally curved piece of wood.

The ceiling changes height across the room. Part of it is dropped lower than the rest, and part slopes with the underside of the roof, so a space of only three and a half mats gains a sense of rise and fall. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to these details in calling it a tea room built with real care.

The inn Kura no Yado Ōrintei calls the tea room Ōhaku and presents it as a rustic thatched-hut style room entered from the garden path through the crawl-in door, with a sunken hearth and a Mizuya preparation area, restored to its original appearance. The inn gives its size as four and a half mats, but both the Agency's database and the recommendation table say three and a half, and this page follows the Agency.

Visiting the Tea Room and Joining a Tea Ceremony

The Former Tomita Family Residence Tea Room is in the northwest of the inn's grounds, and the inn includes it in its whole-property plan. A tea ceremony experience in the room is offered by reservation, and the inn says beginners are welcome. No arrangement for drop-in visits was found.

Because it sits at the back of the plot, the Tomita Tea Room is probably hardly visible from the public road. If a stay or a tea session brings you inside, look at the bamboo post, the curved timber of the opening and the meeting of the dropped and sloping ceilings from a seated position, at the eye level the room was designed for.