Kihachiya Ryokan Annex (Ura-Sangai)

The Annex Behind the Inn

The Kihachiya Ryokan Annex (Ura-Sangai) (喜八屋旅館別館（裏三階）) is a three-storey timber annex of a ryokan of the late Taisho era in Ogimachi, Sado City, Niigata Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on August 3, 2006 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a 3-storey timber building roofed in sheet iron, with a building area of 43 square metres; registration number 15-0202.

Three Storeys for a Sea View

The Kihachiya Ryokan Annex (Ura-Sangai) stands directly behind the Old Building, on its east side. It is a 3-storey timber building of 8.2 by 4.5 metres with a hipped roof in sheet iron, entered on its long side (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The ground floor held storage, the second floor a passage to the newer wing and other spaces, and only the top floor had guest rooms, two of them.

Sado City believes the Annex predates the 1928 rebuilding of the Old Building and dates it to around the end of the Taisho era. The name Ura-Sangai, roughly "the three storeys at the back", added in brackets to the registered name, describes exactly what it is.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency registered the Kihachiya Ryokan Annex as a structure that contributes to the historic landscape of the country. It notes that the building was planned around the view of the sea to the east and shows how inns of the time set out to secure a view.

Putting the only guest rooms on the top floor and giving the two levels below to storage and a corridor makes the priority plain: the rooms were there for the view.

What to Look For

Look at the Kihachiya Ryokan Annex together with the Stone Storehouse that adjoins it to the northeast. The storehouse roof served as a terrace off the third-floor guest rooms and was called the "balcony" (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Sado City), so guests could step out of their rooms to look at the sea.

When the storehouse was built it stood at the very back of the plot, facing the shore (Agency for Cultural Affairs), which means the beach lay just beyond the terrace as seen from the Annex's top floor.

Visiting

The Kihachiya Ryokan Annex stands behind the Old Building, and no official information was found on interior access or photography. Sado City's townscape survey report of 2023 says the Annex and the Stone Storehouse were too badly decayed to be surveyed. Directions from Ogi Port and the use of the Old Building's ground floor are covered on the Kihachiya Ryokan page.