Kikusuiro Former Main Building

The Building Kikusuiro Opened With in 1891

The Kikusuiro Former Main Building (菊水楼旧本館, Kikusuirō Kyū-honkan) is a 2-story wooden building of 1891 at the Kikusuiro ryotei in Takabatake-cho, Nara City, Nara Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on December 4, 2000. It dates from the year Kikusuiro opened and is the oldest of the four registered structures on the site.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the Kikusuiro Former Main Building as a wooden structure of 2 stories with a tiled roof and a building area of 299 square meters. The roof is in the hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri form, covered with interlocking pan tiles (Sangawara-buki), and the agency describes the exterior as purely Japanese in style. In 1901, ten years after it was built, a 3-story Main Building was added and joined to it.

Why the Former Main Building Was Registered

The Kikusuiro Former Main Building carries registration number 29-0030 and was listed under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The agency's commentary opens with the setting: a corner lot facing the approach to Kasuga Taisha, with Arai-ike Pond in view behind it. It goes on to note the building's long history as a dining inn that received many distinguished guests, and the fact that it still keeps the appearance it had when it was built.

The commentary closes by observing that the dignified look of the old inn is familiar and dear to the people of Nara. In other words, the Former Main Building was valued not only for its construction but for being a long-standing part of the townscape.

In the national register it is classed as a tertiary-industry building, the heading used for commercial and service buildings. It was registered as a place of business built to receive guests, not as a temple, shrine or private house.

What to Look For in the Former Main Building

According to the company that runs Kikusuiro, the Former Main Building contains a tatami room called Kasa no Ma, the Umbrella Room, named for the umbrella-shaped pulls on its sliding fusuma doors. It measures 45 square meters with a ceiling height of 2.5 meters, and its Engawa veranda looks out onto the garden. The company presents it as a room in the most historic building of Kikusuiro.

There is a garden on the north side of the Kikusuiro Former Main Building, separated from the entrance area of the Main Building by the wall in which the Garden Gate stands. The company's information does not make clear if the garden seen from the Umbrella Room is this same north garden.

The Former Main Building and the Main Building share the same roof type, hip-and-gable with pan tiles; only the number of stories differs, 2 against 3. Built ten years apart, the two buildings continue one into the other in a single Japanese idiom, and that continuity is worth noticing.

Visiting the Kikusuiro Former Main Building

The Kikusuiro Former Main Building is part of a working restaurant, and its interior is open only to restaurant guests and to people attending banquets or weddings. The Umbrella Room seats up to 20 and is used for private functions, so if you want to see a room in the Former Main Building, the surest course is to ask about it when you book.

Ask about photography inside the Kikusuiro Former Main Building when you make your reservation. Directions and the restaurant's opening hours are on the Kikusuiro page.