Shoji Family Residence Detached Reception Room

A Guest Wing Added in 1899

The Shoji Family Residence Detached Reception Room (荘司家住宅別座敷, Shōji-ke Jūtaku Betsuzashiki) is a 2-storey reception wing built in 1899 (Meiji 32) in Nishiando, Ando Town, Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2020.

It adjoins the east side of the main house and stacks one formal room for guests on top of another. It was extended in the late Taisho period. At 40 square metres it is modest in size, yet of the six registered buildings on the Shoji property it is the only one with a firmly recorded year of construction.

Here a tiled, 2-storey guest wing of the late Meiji era was attached to a thatched house of the late Edo period. The Shoji Family Residence Detached Reception Room shows how a family of village officials added rooms for visitors as its social role demanded.

Why It Was Registered

The Shoji Family Residence Detached Reception Room received registration number 29-0296 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 notes that, together with the main house, it shapes the view within the compound. Although its roof form and materials differ from the house, its lean-to geya roofs on the north and south run straight on from those of the main house, so that from outside the two still read as one home. That skill in making a later addition sit comfortably beside the original is the point of interest here.

What to Look For

A hip-and-gable tiled roof joined to the house

The roof is irimoya-zukuri, a hip-and-gable form, covered with sangawara-buki pan tiles. Lean-to roofs on the south and north faces continue the line of those on the main house. A tiled 2-storey block standing shoulder to shoulder with a thatched Yamato-mune house is the kind of contrast you only get where Edo and Meiji buildings share a single plot.

A wing that juts to the south-east

At the east end of the south face, a tsunoya wing with a gabled roof projects forward, its ridge turned at right angles to the main block. It breaks up the plan and gives the south elevation more depth.

Alcove rooms on both floors

On both the ground and upper floors the building holds a zashiki reception room with a tokonoma alcove on the east wall. Alcoves set the same way on both levels show that the upstairs room, too, was treated as a formal space for receiving guests.

Cedar bark on the east wall only

The east wall is clad in cedar bark, while the other walls are finished in shikkui lime plaster. One brown face among white ones is easy to spot. Since both alcoves also sit on the east, the bark may have been chosen with views from that side in mind, but no source we found explains it.

Visiting

The Betsuzashiki 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 within the compound against the main house, we could not confirm how much of it is visible from outside the property. Please stay off the grounds and respect the residents' privacy.

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