Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie Main House

The Main House of Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie

The Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie Main House (奈良町にぎわいの家主屋) is an omoteya-style townhouse built in 1917 in Nakanoshinyacho, Nara City, Nara Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on May 2, 2017 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a 2-storey timber building with a tiled roof, a building area of 203 square metres and an attached high wall, altered in the late Showa period and repaired in 2015; it is one of four Registered Tangible Cultural Properties at the site, registration number 29-0249.

Shop Wing and Living Quarters

The Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie Main House faces east at the south end of the street in Nakanoshinyacho (Agency for Cultural Affairs). In the Omoteya-zukuri manner, the shop wing on the street and the living quarters set further back are separate structures joined by an entrance hall. The roofs are gabled and tiled, except that the north end of the shop wing is finished with a hip-and-gable roof.

Upstairs in the shop wing, where a Nara townhouse would usually have a plank-floored storage loft, there is a tatami room reached by an unusually wide staircase. A small door in a corner of the wall let servants pass food and tea from the next room, which suggests the room was used for receiving clients and doing business (guide leaflet).

At the back, a separate hip-and-gable wing projects from the house, with a 15-mat reception room on the ground floor and another reception room above, both looking north (Agency for Cultural Affairs). In wide-fronted townhouses the reception wing normally sits beside the main block; stacking a 2-storey reception wing at the rear of the plot is, according to the leaflet, without parallel.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency registered it as a model of design, noting that the rear wing with a reception room on each floor, opened to a northern view, shows how the omoteya townhouse developed in the modern era.

The guide leaflet points to a Buddhist altar room that juts out from the reception room and to a corridor running from the entrance and tea room to the 15-mat room, so that guests could reach the back without passing through other rooms. It reads these as the work of a freer Taishō-era imagination, and notes signs in the tea room and altar room that the plan was adjusted while building was under way.

The Owner and the Master Carpenter

The builders of the Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie Main House left their names in four places: a Munafuda ridge tablet nailed under the ridge beam of the entrance hall, and ink inscriptions on three ridge beams, in the shop wing and in both ranges of the living quarters. Such records are usually found in one place only (guide leaflet).

The tablet records that work began in November 1916 and the frame was raised in June 1917, for the owner Ōsumi Yasusaburō, under the master carpenter Yamaga Kumakichi. Yamaga (1868 to 1949) also worked as a temple carpenter and is said to have taken part in repairs at Hōryūji. The tablet is now kept by the Nara City Historical Archives.

What to Look For

Start in the street with the black plastered walls and lattice of the shop wing, then walk round to the north garden side of the Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie Main House, where the hipped end of the shop wing and the roofs of the rear wing overlap. Iron brackets supporting the eaves are fixed to the north wall (guide leaflet).

Inside, the leaflet singles out small sliding panels over the 15-mat room painted in the Edo-period Yamato-e manner with scenes from The Tale of Genji, an alcove sill of black lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the coffered ceiling painted with hosoge flowers and the cusped window of the altar room, and a half-moon window in the 4-and-a-half-mat tea room. The alcoves were fitted out in the 2015 repairs under the direction of the wood and bamboo craftsman Kawasaki Hōgaku (1937 to 2016).

Visiting

The ground floor of the Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie Main House, from the earth-floored Toriniwa passage through the reception rooms, altar room and tea room, is open free of charge during opening hours, and the low upper floor of the shop wing is part of the visit. The upper reception room of the rear wing is closed to the public (guide leaflet; official website).

We found no official guidance on photography. Opening hours and directions are on the Naramachi Nigiwai-no-Ie page.