Nishida Family Residence Main House Central Wing

The Central Wing at a Glance

The Nishida Family Residence Main House Central Wing (西田家住宅主屋中央棟, Nishida-ke Jūtaku Shuoku Chūōtō) is a two-storey wooden house of the early Showa period in Minoyamacho, Yamatokoriyama City, Nara Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 17 February 2004. It is the core of the main house, set at the centre of the estate's north front, with a building area of 178 square metres.

The first thing the Agency for Cultural Affairs says about it is that it stands tall. The upper floor has an unusually generous ceiling height, so although the house has only two storeys it reads a clear step higher than the houses around it. Yamatokoriyama City makes the same point: that extra height is what gives the building its air of grandeur.

The West Wing adjoins it on one side, and the rest of the Nishida Family Residence spreads out from the Central Wing to the west and south.

Why It Was Registered

The Nishida Family Residence Main House Central Wing was registered as a model of design. The Agency points to its combination of a commanding exterior and interiors that change character from room to room, starting with the famous Bamboo Room, and calls it a fine example of high-quality modern Japanese-style domestic architecture.

On the ground floor, formal shoin reception rooms line both sides of a central corridor. Upstairs there are just two large rooms. Keeping the guest rooms downstairs and giving the upper floor over to broad halls is typical of the grand Japanese-style houses built in the early Showa years.

What to Look For

The roof is the showpiece. The Agency describes it as yatsumune-zukuri with pantiles; the city describes a hip-and-gable irimoya roof whose east side is worked up in the yatsumune manner, with gables stacked one against another so the roof planes fold in several directions.

At the centre of the north front the entrance porch pushes forward under a curved karahafu gable roofed in cypress bark. The city calls it a carriage porch. Every other roof on the Central Wing is tiled; only here does the builder switch to bark, and the curve of the gable marks the middle of the facade.

In the northeast corner is the Bamboo Room, an 8-mat shoin room in which posts, lintels, nageshi rails and ceiling boards are all sheathed in fine strips of bamboo skin woven in an ajiro pattern and finished with vermilion lacquer, a technique known as rantai. According to the city it is the work of Kawasaki Yūgen, a noted Nara cabinetmaker, and it is the room most closely associated with the Nishida Family Residence Main House Central Wing.

Seeing It for Yourself

The Nishida Family Residence Main House Central Wing is part of a private home and its interiors are normally closed. The Bamboo Room and the upstairs halls are known to the public only through photographs and published descriptions.

From outside you can make out the upper storey and the roofline rising above the stone wall. The karahafu entrance sits back behind the main gate, so how much of it you can see from the street depends on the day. Photograph only the exterior, from the public road.