Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn

About the Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn

The Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn (松本家住宅北屋敷西納屋, Matsumoto-ke Jūtaku Kita-yashiki Nishi Naya) is a one-storey timber barn of the early Showa period (1926 to 1945) in the south-west of the North Compound of the Matsumoto estate in Kodera, Koryo Town, Nara Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2017.

The Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn is small, 2.5 by 1.5 bays (ken), under a gabled pantile roof, with a building area of 15 m². The registration includes an attached board fence. It was renovated in 1995.

A Work Shed Open to the East

The east side of the barn has no wall at all. The other three sides are boarded along the lower part and finished in white Shikkui plaster above.

Inside, the walls are left as rough, unfinished clay, and the floor is beaten earth. This is not a room for show but a place for handling tools and produce. The Agency for Cultural Affairs suggests it served as a store and workplace for farm work.

The open east side faces into the North Compound, close to the rice storehouse and barn and the Inui storehouse, and would have been handy for small jobs and for keeping tools at hand.

What a Small Building Adds

At 15 m², the Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn is one of the smallest registered buildings on the estate. Even so, its boarded-and-plastered walls match those of the front gate and the gatehouse, part of a consistent look across the whole property.

The Agency describes it as a record of how work used to be done here, and it was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. That a modest shed like this survives alongside the big storehouses helps show the full range of daily work on a wealthy farm.

Seeing the Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn

The Matsumoto Family Residence North Compound West Barn belongs to a private home and visitors cannot enter the grounds.

Although it stands towards the road, it sits behind the gatehouse and board fence, so probably little of it can be seen from outside, and its open east side faces inward. Please do not look into the grounds. Directions are on the Matsumoto Family Residence (Koryo Town) page.