Tamaya

A Former Inn at the Gate of Taimadera with Two Registered Buildings

Tamaya stands at 1242 Moto-Taimagata, Taima, Katsuragi City, Nara Prefecture, a former inn whose main house and detached room were entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 25 February 2016. They are registered properties rather than designated ones. Both are dated Edo, in the range 1830 to 1868.

The Agency records the main house as a two-storeyed former inn on a corner before the gate of the temple Taimadera. Such inns lodged travellers on the highways of the Edo period.

The name is simply the house's trading name.

One Lively, the Other Quiet

The two buildings are assessed in opposite words.

Of the main house, the Agency closes that with lattices set around the outside, a plaster relief of a crane and pine on the wall, and jewel shapes carved on the brackets beneath the eaves, it has a lively air and contributes to the prospect before an ancient temple.

Of the detached room, it records boarded rooms on the ground floor that were once 2 guest rooms, with 2 alcoves on the west and an openwork transom where the rooms were divided, and closes that it shows a quiet bearing.

A plaster relief is built up with a plasterer's trowel. A bracket carries the eaves from below. An openwork transom is a panel above the lintel carved through in a pattern.

At Obaraya Harada Shoten, the closing words differ from store to store: carefully made, plain in design, standard in construction.

Here the main house toward the street and the detached room behind are set as a pair in words of atmosphere.

Both Buildings Change Form at the Two Ends of the Roof

Main house and detached room alike change roof form from one end to the other.

The Agency records the main house as hip-and-gabled on the west face and gabled on the east, with a slightly convex pantiled roof, a lean-to and a railing running round.

The detached room is hip-and-gabled on the south face and gabled on the north, pantiled, with a railed veranda round its upper south-east face.

A hip-and-gable roof is gabled above and slopes on all four sides below; a gabled roof falls to two sides. In both buildings, one end is hip-and-gabled and the other gabled.

The Kusumori Kahoku main house is hip-and-gabled at the east and gabled at the west; the Akagi main house gabled at the south and hip-and-gabled at the north.

Here two buildings on one property share the form, differing only in direction: west and east for the one, south and north for the other.

Former Uses Kept in the Words of the Record

What the record gives is not the present use but the former one.

The main house is called a former inn. The boarded rooms of the detached room's ground floor are called former guest rooms.

In both, the word former marks the earlier use. The name Tamaya is a trading name, and nothing in it shows that this was an inn.

At the Soka museum, the brackets in the name hold the former use; at the former Yamanaka main house, the word former stands in the name itself.

Here the former use survives in the commentary rather than in the name.

The detached room stands north-west of the main house with its ridge north to south, joined to it by a corridor.

Visiting

The property is at 1242 Moto-Taimagata, Taima, Katsuragi City, Nara Prefecture. Both carry the same address.

The main house covers 142 square metres and the detached room 42 square metres. The detached room was repaired about 2010.

In the same district stands the Nakanobo Inari shrine, a separate cultural property.

No owner is recorded, and opening and terms follow the owner's arrangements. Check before travelling.

Taimadera is the old temple at the end of the street before which these buildings stand.