Naito Family Residence Middle Gate

The Gate between the Front Yard and the Garden

The Naito Family Residence Middle Gate (内藤家住宅中門) is a bracketed Udekimon gate of the early Showa era (1926–1945) in Ikedacho, Nara City, Nara Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on August 7, 2023 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a tiled timber gate with an opening 1.4 metres wide and short walls on either side; registration number 29-0355.

A Gate Dividing the Front Yard from the Garden

The Naito Family Residence Middle Gate stands on the north side of the main house and faces east (Agency for Cultural Affairs). It has a gabled roof of interlocking round and flat tiles, eaves of widely spaced rafters with thin battens nailed across them, and a short wing wall on each side.

It marks the line between the front yard, which runs from the nagayamon gate to the main house, and the formal garden north of the house (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Nara City says the gate, set in the middle of the garden, gives the compound its sense of formality. Of the four registered structures it is the youngest, built in the early Showa era.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency points to the care taken over details: square posts set on cut-stone bases, double doors of boards braced with diagonal cross-battens, and a transom of horizontal slats. It registered the gate for creating a formal residential setting and contributing to the historic landscape.

What to Look For

Read the gate from the ground up: cut-stone bases, square posts, the cross-braced double doors and the slatted transom above them (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

According to Nara City, the ridge-end tiles carry the family crest; look up at the ends of the ridge to find it.

Visiting

The Naito Family Residence Middle Gate stands inside the nagayamon gate, between the front yard and the garden. The residence is a private home, and no official information on access to the compound was found.