Tatsumi Family Residence Corridor

A Link Between the Main House and the Back Quarter

The Tatsumi Family Residence Corridor (辰巳家住宅渡り廊下, Tatsumi-ke Jūtaku Watari-rōka) is a single-story timber building constructed in 1915 in Hōryūji-nishi, Ikaruga Town, Nara Prefecture, and registered as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 24, 2001. It runs south from the main house of the Tatsumi estate and abuts the north side of the Third Storehouse.

Long and narrow in plan, with a tiled roof and a building area of 22 square meters, it is the second-smallest of the estate's registered buildings after the charcoal shed.

Half Corridor, Half Storeroom

Despite the name, the Tatsumi Family Residence Corridor is not all passageway. A strip half a bay wide along the west side forms the corridor from the main house to the Third Storehouse and the tea room. The east side is a Nando, a storeroom.

The arrangement is practical. Household goods headed for the storehouse and utensils bound for the tea room could travel under cover from the main house, with a place to set things down on the way.

Plain, but Finely Made

The building was registered, as number 29-0048, under the criterion for structures that would be difficult to reproduce. The official description calls it simple, then praises its slender posts and beams and its delicate lattice windows as an elegant design.

Thin members are harder to work well than heavy ones, and a lattice only looks fine when every bar matches. This is a different kind of skill from the big timbers of the main house, and just as much a record of the carpenters who built the estate in 1915.

The description also groups the corridor with the Third Storehouse and the tea room as the inward-facing part of the house. If the gatehouse and wall are the face the family showed the street, the Tatsumi Family Residence Corridor belongs to the private side.

Visiting

The Tatsumi Family Residence Corridor sits deep inside the compound, south of the main house, and should be assumed invisible from the lanes outside. It is not open to the public, and no opening had been announced as of September 2026.

There is realistically no way to see the lattice windows at present. If you visit the area, plan around the structures that can be seen from outside, such as the gatehouse on the north front. Directions are on the Tatsumi Family Residence page.