Shoji Family Residence New Reception Room and Rice Barn

Guest Room and Rice Barn Under One Roofline

The Shoji Family Residence New Reception Room and Rice Barn (荘司家住宅新座敷及び稲納屋, Shōji-ke Jūtaku Shinzashiki oyobi Inaya) is a mid Meiji-period building in Nishiando, Ando Town, Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture, combining a reception room to the north with a rice barn to the south, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2020.

It stands on the eastern edge of the Shoji property, toward the south end. It was extended around 1913 (Taisho 2) and again around 1935 (Showa 10). The building is mostly single storey with a partial 2nd floor and covers 73 square metres, and a wall fitted with a small wicket door is included in the listing.

A room for entertaining guests and a barn for harvested rice share the same building. Formal hospitality and farm work sit back to back on the east edge of the compound, and that pairing is what makes the Shoji Family Residence New Reception Room and Rice Barn interesting.

Why It Was Registered

The Shoji Family Residence New Reception Room and Rice Barn received registration number 29-0297 in the 95th round of national registrations, dated 2020/4/3, for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs values it for preserving the look of a village lining its old moat. Nishiando was once a moated settlement, ringed by a ditch, and this is the building that gives the Shoji compound its face on the moat side. Where the main house and detached reception room shape the view inside the property, this one matters for how the household appears from the village.

What to Look For

Two roof forms in one building

The new reception room on the north has a kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof, while the rice barn on the south has an irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof, both tiled. The two uses inside are announced by two different roof shapes outside.

A refined alcove

The Agency's notes single out the fine tokonoma alcove of the new reception room. Though it shares a building with a barn, the reception room was finished with care and kept the standing of a room for guests. The details of the alcove are not described in published sources.

A barn you can walk through

The rice barn takes the form of a nagayamon, a gatehouse with rooms alongside, with doorways on both its east and west faces. The passage through it probably served as a way between the moat side to the east and the inner compound to the west.

A wall and a covered link

From the middle of the west face a wall runs toward the detached reception room, and from the middle of the east face a gabled roof reaches across to the rice storehouse plot. The Shoji Family Residence New Reception Room and Rice Barn sits at the knot between the reception rooms on the west and the rice storehouse beyond the moat.

Visiting

The building is part of a private home and its interior is not open; as of October 2026 we found no announcement of open days. Because it stands on the eastern edge of the property and is valued for its part in the village scene, some of its exterior is probably visible from outside the grounds, though we have not confirmed this on site. Please stay off the property and respect the residents' privacy.

Photographs supplied by the Ando Town Board of Education in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database show the exterior.