Mizuhosu (Onishi Family Residence) Gatehouse and Middle Gate

What the Mizuhosu (Onishi Family Residence) Gatehouse and Middle Gate Are

The Mizuhosu (Onishi Family Residence) Gatehouse and Middle Gate (瑞穂酢（大西家住宅）門屋及び中門, mon'ya oyobi chūmon) are a pair of early Taisho-era gates (1912 to 1918) in Nakamachi, Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, entered together on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 27 February 2023. The gatehouse is a single-storey timber Nagayamon, a gate with rooms built into its flanks, covering 29 square metres on the street to the north. The middle gate is a timber gate 3.9 metres wide inside the compound. Both are roofed in tile.

They do different jobs. The gatehouse is the front door of the whole brewer's estate; the middle gate closes off the formal garden of the main house and leads guests to its Shikidai entrance. Together they stage the passage between the public street and the private reception rooms.

Why the Gates Were Listed

The Gatehouse and Middle Gate were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs stresses that the gatehouse, the inner storehouse and the former miso storehouse together form the street front of the estate. The east end of the gatehouse joins the former miso storehouse, so from the road the buildings read as one unbroken line.

The gatehouse takes the old nagayamon type and gives it a Taisho twist. Doors sit in the centre; to the west is a four-and-a-half-mat room with a projecting lattice window, and to the east a storeroom. The walls are Shinkabe, with the posts left visible, and the lower walls are clad in yamato-bari boarding, boards fixed alternately to the front and back so that they overlap. The joinery, though, uses glass doors, a detail the agency singles out as modern.

The middle gate earns its place through craftsmanship. It has an Osa-ranma, a transom filled with closely spaced slender slats like the reed of a loom, and the agency notes the precise work on the frames of its doors and lower panels. Every guest heading for the shikidai walked past this gate, and that is where the builders put their finest finishing.

What to Look For

Of the Mizuhosu (Onishi Family Residence) Gatehouse and Middle Gate, only the gatehouse can be enjoyed from outside. The lattice window on the west side let someone in the room keep an eye on the street, and its fine bars give the frontage its crisp look. Because one flank is a room and the other a storeroom, the two halves of the facade are not identical; compare them either side of the doors.

The overlapping yamato-bari boards throw a band of shadow that sharpens the contrast with the pale plaster above. Set into that traditional front, the glass doors must have looked strikingly new in the early Taisho years.

The estate once had a second nagayamon. The long rice storehouse to the south, on an old property line, began as a gate building with doors before it was turned into a store. Comparing it with the working gatehouse on the north street hints at how the limits of the property have shifted.

Visiting the Gates

The Mizuhosu (Onishi Family Residence) Gatehouse and Middle Gate lead into a private home and a working brewery, and visitors cannot pass through them (checked 17 September 2026).

The gatehouse faces the north street, so its exterior can be seen from the public road; standing on the opposite side gives the best view of the lattice and boarding. The middle gate sits beyond the gatehouse, in front of the main house, and is not visible from outside. The doorway is in daily use, so do not block it while taking photographs.