Yamada Liquor Store (Haseji Teahouse) Main House

A Shop Rebuilt After the Flood

The Yamada Liquor Store (Haseji Teahouse) Main House (山田酒店（茶房長谷路）主屋, Yamada Saketen Sabō Haseji Shuoku) is a 2-storey timber shop and residence built in 1812 on the approach to Hasedera temple in Hatsuse, Sakurai City, Nara Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 4, 2000. Its building area is 109 square meters.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the house went up after the local river, recorded as the Hasegawa, flooded in 1811, so the family re-established its shop on the pilgrims' road the year after the water receded. An extension followed in the early Taishō period (1912 to 1925 in the Agency's database), which means the building combines an Edo-period core with Taishō alterations.

Of the six Yamada Liquor Store structures registered together, the main house is the only one classed as a commercial building. The other five are filed as residential.

A Low Upper Floor and Rooms Arranged by Purpose

The Yamada Liquor Store main house is a timber Tsushi-nikai building, meaning its upper floor has a deliberately low ceiling. The roof is a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri form laid with pantiles. From the street the eaves sit low, which makes the ground-floor shop front look broad.

The Agency's description spells out the plan. The shop faces the street; to the north lie a dining room and a family sitting room (chanoma); on the east side are two tatami rooms looking onto the inner garden. Business at the front, daily life at the back, guest rooms to the side: each direction has its own job.

The garden that those two east rooms face was laid out in the Taishō period, together with the teahouse zashiki and the tea room. In its note on the tea room, the Agency counts the main house, alongside the zashiki, among the rooms that serve as a teahouse overlooking the garden. The inner rooms of an Edo shop are now seats for looking at a garden.

Why Yamada Liquor Store's Main House Is Registered

The main house of Yamada Liquor Store carries registration number 29-0039. It was registered under the criterion of structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency describes it as a sake and liquor shop from the late Edo period with a solid, substantial shop front. At 109 square meters it is not a large building. Yet, as the Agency's note on the inner storehouse points out, this has been a liquor shop since late Edo times, and its long-standing street front is one of the fixed points of the approach townscape.

East of the house runs the wall, with the garden gate set halfway along it. For people walking up the approach, the shop front, the wall and the gate read as one continuous facade.

Visiting the Main House of Yamada Liquor Store

The shop front of the Yamada Liquor Store main house can be seen from the approach at any time. To take in the low eaves and the gable together, step to the opposite side of the street and look back.

You can go inside 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. Which garden-side room you are shown to depends on the day, so if you want to see the rooms of the main house, ask the staff. The family's private quarters are not open. No photography policy is published, so check before taking pictures inside.