Okahashi Family Residence West Barn and Garden Gate

About the Okahashi Family Residence West Barn and Garden Gate

The Okahashi Family Residence West Barn and Garden Gate (岡橋家住宅西納屋及び庭門, Okahashi-ke Jūtaku Nishi-naya oyobi Niwamon) is an early Showa-period building that combines a garden gate and a barn, attached to the east side of the detached reception room on the Okahashi estate in Ozukucho, Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 17 August 2020 (No. 29-0314).

Two jobs share one roof here. The single-storey timber building has a Kirizuma-zukuri gable of Sangawara-buki pantiles and a building area of 24 square metres. The western bay is a gateway closed by sliding doors; the eastern part is a barn.

The barn has doorways on both its south and north faces. The gate provides the passage between the southern and northern halves of the estate, just beside the reception room.

Why the barn and gate were registered

The Okahashi Family Residence West Barn and Garden Gate was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that, with the east barn and high wall, it divides the estate into north and south, and that it sits in harmony with the reception room next door.

Between the front garden of the main house and the work yard to the north, the Okahashi estate has a continuous line of buildings: the reception room, then this barn and gate, then the east barn and high wall. The garden gate is the opening in that line. Anyone moving between the garden kept for guests and the yard kept for work would pass through it.

Doors on both faces of the barn make sense in this position. Tools or produce could go in and out from either yard, so the building works as a partition and a through-route at the same time.

What to look for on the barn and gate

The dado tells the two parts apart. Above, the walls are uniformly white Shikkui plaster. Below, the gate bay has horizontal lapped boards (Shitami-itabari) while the barn has vertical boards (Tateita-bari). Under one roof, the direction of the boarding marks where gate ends and barn begins.

The gate bay's lapped boarding matches the entrance of the reception room next door. Horizontal boards where people pass, vertical boards where things are stored: the same rule links the late Edo reception room and this early Showa addition, which may be what the Agency has in mind when it speaks of harmony between them.

Small as it is, the building keeps the roof height and pitch of the reception room, so from a distance the two read as a single long range.

Visiting the barn and gate

The Okahashi Family Residence West Barn and Garden Gate stands near the middle of the plot, east of the reception room, and cannot be seen from the lanes around the estate. The gate cannot be passed through and the barn is not open.

The estate is private and was not open to the public as of September 2026. Directions and a note on which buildings are visible from outside are on the Okahashi Family Residence page.