Okamoto Family Residence Connecting Corridor

What Is the Okamoto Family Residence Connecting Corridor?

The Okamoto Family Residence Connecting Corridor (岡本家住宅渡廊下, Okamoto-ke Jūtaku Watari-rōka) is a single-storey timber passage built in 1906 in Yagicho 2-chome, Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, linking the main house and the annex of the Okamoto Family Residence; it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 November 2016. It has a building area of 37 square meters.

It has a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof and runs 6.5 ken, about 11.8 meters, from the living block of the Store and Main House westward to the Annex in the middle of the plot. The ken is the traditional Japanese unit for the span between two posts.

More Than a Passage

The Okamoto Connecting Corridor holds more than a walkway. Its north side is an open corridor with no walls or sliding doors, while the south side is divided into five small rooms, among them a dressing room, a bathroom and a toilet. Grooming and bathing were placed right along the route the family took between the main house and the annex.

The open walkway is on the north because that side faces the courtyard. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Okamoto Family Residence Connecting Corridor frames the courtyard together with the main house and the annex, giving the inner part of the property a well-composed setting. Walking along it, you would have the garden open on one hand and a row of small doors on the other.

From the central corridor of the main house, through this corridor and on into the annex, the family could reach the back of the house without stepping outside. The building sits at the hinge of that single route from the shop front to the innermost room.

A Sukiya Dressing Room and a Round Window

The Agency points to two details: the dressing room, fitted out in the sukiya manner, and a round window in the bathroom. Taking such care over small service rooms says something about how a leading Meiji merchant family lived.

Sukiya design borrows from the tea-house tradition: slender timbers, lightly worked surfaces and understated refinement. It usually appears in reception rooms for guests. Here it was spent on a dressing room for the household.

The corridor was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. In its case the landscape in question is not the street but the inner courtyard, enclosed by the main house, the corridor and the annex.

Visiting the Okamoto Connecting Corridor

The Okamoto Family Residence Connecting Corridor is part of a private home and is not open to the public. It stands behind the Store and Main House along the courtyard, so it cannot be seen from the Shimotsumichi road.

Only the street front of the Store and Main House is visible from outside. The layout of the site and directions are on the Okamoto Family Residence page.