Matsumoto Family Residence Main House

About the Matsumoto Family Residence Main House

The Matsumoto Family Residence Main House (松本家住宅主屋, Matsumoto-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey timber farmhouse of the early Showa period (1926 to 1945) in the moated village of Kodera, Koryo Town, Nara Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2017.

It stands at the centre of the South Compound, the southern half of a family estate divided by the village road. Under a long gabled roof of pantiles, it measures 10 by 5 bays (ken) and covers 243 m², making the Matsumoto Family Residence Main House the largest of the 13 registered buildings.

A Model of Design

The Matsumoto Family Residence Main House was registered as a model of design. Only two of the 13 buildings on the estate were registered on that basis, this house and the inner storehouse; the others were listed for their contribution to the landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out the quality of its timber and the fine finish of its detailing. In the early Showa years large tiled farmhouses were still being built new, and this one shows the standard a wealthy farming family of the Nara Basin could reach.

It was renovated in 1979 and 1980, but the plan appears to keep its original framework.

Earth Floor and Six Rooms

Inside, the eastern half is a broad earth-floored work area and the western half is raised living space: six rooms in two rows of three, with verandas running along both the north and south sides. Splitting the house into earth floor and matted rooms along an east-west line is common in Nara Basin farmhouses; here it is done at a generous ten-bay scale.

On the south front a bathroom block projects from the middle, and a small four-and-a-half-mat room sits at the south end. These additions break the plain rectangle and hint at how the house was lived in.

The size of the earth floor reflects a household that brought farm work and hired hands indoors. The servants' quarters stand just to the east, joined to the Matsumoto Family Residence Main House by a gate at their north end.

Seeing the Matsumoto Family Residence Main House

The Matsumoto Family Residence Main House is a private home and its interior is not open.

Set back behind the front gate, it is visible from the road mainly as a long tiled roof above the gate and walls. Please do not peer through the gateway; the length of the roof is best appreciated from the road. Directions are on the Matsumoto Family Residence (Koryo Town) page.