Yamada Liquor Store (Haseji Teahouse) Teahouse Zashiki

A Detached Guest Wing Beyond the Garden

The Yamada Liquor Store (Haseji Teahouse) Teahouse Zashiki (山田酒店（茶房長谷路）茶房座敷, Yamada Saketen Sabō Haseji Sabō Zashiki) is a 2-storey timber guest wing in the sukiya manner, 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. It has a building area of 53 square meters.

A zashiki is a formal tatami reception room, and this one stands apart in the northeast corner of the lot, across the inner garden and as far from the street as the site allows. Guests walk from the shop side through the garden to reach it. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the early Taishō period and gives the span as 1912 to 1925.

In its note on the wall, the Agency credits the Yamada Liquor Store teahouse zashiki, along with the tea room, the garden gate and the wall, to the grandfather of the owner at the time of registration, whose name it records as 山田新. It is the centrepiece of the early Taishō remodelling of the compound.

Hipped Gable to the East, Plain Gable to the West

The roof is what you notice first. The east end is finished as an Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable, the west end as a straight Kirizuma-zukuri gable, so one building carries two roof forms. Both are laid with pantiles. The hipped end looks heavier around the eaves, while the gable end rises as a clean triangle, and the teahouse zashiki of Yamada Liquor Store changes character depending on which side you view it from.

The Agency describes the style as sukiya-like (Sukiya-zukuri). Rather than the stiff formality of a warrior-class reception hall, it uses slender members and light finishes, and puts the connection to the garden first.

Two Floors That Both Open to the Garden

On both floors, the Yamada Liquor Store teahouse zashiki has wide openings toward the inner garden. Making a detached guest wing two storeys high meant guests upstairs and down could both look out over the garden.

The ground floor holds a main room fitted with a Tokonoma alcove, shelves and a writing bay (shoin), with an anteroom (tsugi-no-ma) beside it. A kitchen is built in, and an Engawa veranda runs along the garden side. Guests could be seated and served food prepared under the same roof, so the wing works as a self-contained place of hospitality.

A room with alcove, shelves and writing bay all together signals a proper room for receiving guests. Here that formality is paired with sukiya lightness and a generous view of the garden. Like the other five structures, it was registered as contributing to the historic landscape of the country, under registration number 29-0040.

Visiting the Teahouse Zashiki of Yamada Liquor Store

The Yamada Liquor Store teahouse zashiki stands at the back of the site, beyond the garden. To see the whole building, go through the garden gate into the inner garden.

You can sit in its rooms when Haseji Teahouse is open and you are there as a customer. According to the Sakurai City Tourism Association, it opens from 11:00 a.m. and has no fixed closing day. Seating depends on how busy it is, so if you would like to sit in the teahouse zashiki, ask the staff. From the garden, look up and compare the two ends of the roof. No photography policy is published; ask before taking pictures.