Ninomiya Family Residence Farm Building

A Farm Building on the Shinano River Plain

The Ninomiya Family Residence Farm Building (二宮家住宅農舎, Ninomiya-ke Jūtaku Nōsha) is a two-storey timber farm outbuilding built in 1948 in Tawarayanagi, Kōnan Ward, Niigata City, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2000. It has a tiled roof and a building area of 77 square metres.

Tawarayanagi is farmland on the east bank of the Shinano River, south of central Niigata. The Ninomiya plot is long and narrow and faces east: the main house stands at the back, and in front of it are outbuildings including this farm building and a compost shed. The farm building therefore belongs to the public face of the homestead.

The main house on the same plot dates from 1918, rebuilt after floods in 1917, and it was registered together with the farm building on 28 April 2000. This family should not be confused with the Ninomiyas of Hasuno in Seirō Town, whose estate has fifteen registered structures. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Hasuno household is a branch of this Tawarayanagi family, but the two properties are separate, in different towns and registered in different years.

Why It Was Registered

The Ninomiya Family Residence Farm Building was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it forms the layout of the homestead together with the main house.

It is a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri building with a pantile roof, with lean-to eaves on the east and north. Because it was meant for storage, its posts are unusually tall, and a room was built upstairs on the west side. Tall storage space for crops and tools below, and a usable room above: a purely practical design.

The year 1948 falls in the period of post-war land reform. On this plot a Taisho-era house and a post-war farm building stand together, keeping the arrangement of a Shinano River homestead.

What to Look For

Notice the height. Built for storage, the Ninomiya Family Residence Farm Building stands on tall posts, which makes its gable end rise high. The eaves on the east and north gave sheltered space for outdoor work and for setting things down.

The plan of the plot is worth reading as well: facing east, with outbuildings at the front and the house at the back of a long, narrow site. The main house is a traditional gabled building entered from the gable end, and the farm building's gable echoes it.

Visiting

The farm building belongs to a private home and is not open to the public, and no arrangements for visitors are offered. Please do not enter the property, and respect that people live here.

Tawarayanagi lies about 6 kilometres south-south-west of Niigata Station in a straight line, in an area of houses and fields with no visitor parking.

To see the inside of a great Echigo landowner's house, the Northern Culture Museum, the former Ito family residence at Sokomi in the same Kōnan Ward, is open to the public.