Yamada Liquor Store (Haseji Teahouse) Tea Room

A Three-and-Three-Quarter-Mat Tea Room Beside the Main House

The Yamada Liquor Store (Haseji Teahouse) Tea Room (山田酒店（茶房長谷路）茶室, Yamada Saketen Sabō Haseji Chashitsu) is a single-storey timber tea room of three and three-quarter mats, built in the early Taishō period at Yamada Liquor Store on the Hasedera temple approach in Hatsuse, Sakurai City, Nara Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 4, 2000. With a building area of 8.7 square meters, it is the smallest of the six structures registered together.

It sits on the south side of the lot, joined to the east face of the main house. The garden gate, which is the teahouse entrance, stands right beside it, so the tea room is the first building guests see once through the gate. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the early Taishō period, giving the span as 1912 to 1925.

In its note on the wall, the Agency credits the Yamada Liquor Store tea room, together with the teahouse zashiki, the garden gate and the wall, to the grandfather of the owner at the time of registration.

Grey Plaster and a Hipped Roof

The room is a sanjō-daime Chashitsu: three full tatami mats for guests plus a shorter daime mat for the host, with a Tokonoma alcove.

Outside, the walls are finished in nezumi-shikkui, a grey "mouse-coloured" Shikkui lime plaster, and the roof is a Yosemune-zukuri hipped form laid with pantiles. The same grey plaster appears on the sleeve walls of the garden gate and on the upper part of the wall along the street, which gives the stretch from the approach to the garden entrance a consistent colour.

The main house and the inner storehouse have gabled roofs and the teahouse zashiki combines a hip-and-gable with a gable. Among the four buildings, only the tea room takes a fully hipped roof, with eaves coming down on all four sides.

Shoji Opened Wide to the Garden

The most telling feature of the Yamada Liquor Store tea room is the wall facing the inner garden. According to the Agency, it is fitted with shoji screens that create a large opening.

Rustic tea rooms in the sōan tradition often keep windows small, controlling light and closing off the view. This one does the opposite, opening its garden side wide with shoji. The opening suggests a seat for enjoying tea while looking at the garden rather than a closed room for formal tea ceremony.

The Agency writes that the tea room, like the main house and the teahouse zashiki, is well known to Hasedera pilgrims as part of a teahouse facing the garden. Its registration number is 29-0041, and it was registered as contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

Visiting the Tea Room of Yamada Liquor Store

Once through the garden gate, the Yamada Liquor Store tea room is right in front of you. The grey plaster walls, the hipped roof and the shoji opening on the garden side can all be seen from the garden.

It is not published if the small room is regularly used for customers during Haseji Teahouse opening hours, so ask the staff if you would like to go in. According to the Sakurai City Tourism Association, the teahouse opens from 11:00 a.m. and has no fixed closing day. No photography policy is published either; ask before taking pictures.