A Dentist's House with Two Faces
The Main House of the Sadakane Residence (定金家住宅主屋, Sadakane-ke Jutaku Shuoku) stands at Otani in Konko, part of Asakuchi City in Okayama Prefecture, was built around 1917, and was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 27 March 2006.
The building faces east, and what you see from the road is a Western-style house: two storeys of timber, symmetrical about a central entrance, painted in two tones so that the structural members read dark against a pale wall. Walk around and the western half turns out to be an ordinary Japanese dwelling under a tiled roof. One building, two architectural vocabularies, joined without apology.
The Western half was a dental surgery. The Sadakane family practised here, receiving patients in rooms flanking the entrance hall while living in the Japanese half behind. Recorded floor area comes to ninety square metres.
Stick Style in a Pilgrimage Town
Registration came under the criterion of serving as a model of design, and the national description is specific about what earns that.
The exterior follows what the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls Stick Style, an American mode of the later nineteenth century in which vertical and horizontal boards are applied to the wall surface to express the frame behind. Visitors sometimes mistake it for half-timbering. The difference lies in the fineness of the members and in the fact that Stick Style boards are decorative rather than structural. Here the posts and window frames carry fluting, a detail more usually found on classical columns, which gives the elevation an unexpected delicacy.
Two features draw the eye upward. Above the tall vertical windows sit segmental pediments, the shallow curved gables the Japanese description calls kushigata, comb-shaped. And in the gable end the carpenter has imitated a hammer-beam truss, the bracketed medieval English roof form, in a house of ninety square metres in rural Okayama. The truss carries no load. It is quotation.
Several regional sources attribute the design to Egawa Saburohachi, the prefectural engineer whose Western-influenced buildings survive across Okayama, and the Takahashi River basin archive includes the house in its listing of his work. The national database records no architect, so the attribution rests on regional scholarship rather than on the register itself.
Seeing It, and the District Around It
The house remains in private hands and the interior is not open. Local heritage listings state plainly that viewing is limited to the exterior, and the building sits on a residential lane where people live ordinary lives. Look from the public road, keep your voice down, and do not enter the grounds.
The setting explains a great deal. Otani is the seat of Konkokyo, a Shinto-derived religion founded here in the nineteenth century, and the district grew as a pilgrimage town serving worshippers arriving from across western Japan. That flow of visitors brought money, and money brought architects and carpenters willing to try new forms. Asakuchi City now counts twenty-one registered structures, a striking number for a city of its size, and a good many of them stand within walking distance of the Sadakane house. The Konkokyo Doshisha buildings, the Konkokyo research institute complex with its own Western wing, the Himei Residence with its nagayamon gate, and the memorial hall of Konko Gakuen school are all nearby.
Konko Station on the JR Sanyo Main Line is the access point, and the walk into Otani takes you past most of the group. Photography from the street is unproblematic, though pointing a lens into a private garden is not. Nobody sells tickets here and nobody staffs a desk. The reward is a quiet forty minutes of looking at buildings that have not been tidied up for tourism.
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- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Fixed-Income House Main Building
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Q&A
- Can the Sadakane Residence Main House be visited inside?
- No. The property is privately owned and only the exterior may be viewed, from the public road. There is no admission system and no visitor facility. Please respect the privacy of the residents and stay off the grounds.
- When was the Sadakane Residence Main House built, and what was it used for?
- The national register records the date as around 1917. It was built as a combined dental surgery and family home, with the Western-style eastern half serving the practice and the Japanese-style western half serving as living quarters.
- What architectural style is the Sadakane Residence Main House?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the exterior as Stick Style, with applied boards expressing the frame, fluted posts and window surrounds, segmental pediments over the tall windows, and a gable ornament imitating a hammer-beam truss.
- Who designed the Sadakane Residence Main House?
- Regional sources attribute it to Egawa Saburohachi, an engineer employed by Okayama Prefecture who designed many Western-influenced public buildings in the region. The national database does not record a designer, so the attribution should be read as a local scholarly view rather than as documented fact.
- How do you reach the Sadakane Residence Main House?
- The house stands in the Otani district of Konko, reached from Konko Station on the JR Sanyo Main Line. The district is the headquarters of Konkokyo and holds several other registered structures within a short walk.
Basic Information
| Name | Sadakane Residence Main House |
|---|---|
| Location | 229-14 Otani, Konko-cho, Asakuchi, Okayama Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structures); registration no. 33-0112; criterion: serving as a model of design |
| Year Designated | Registered 27 March 2006 (gazetted 12 April 2006) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber, two storeys, tiled roof; building area 90 m² |
| Owner | Private (no owner recorded in the national database) |
| Public Access | Exterior viewing only; interior not open to the public |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Sadakane Residence Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00005504
- Cultural Heritage Online: Sadakane Residence Main House
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/170812
- Asakuchi City: List of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.asakuchi.lg.jp/page/2031.html
- Takahashi River Basin Digital Archive for Children: Sadakane Residence Main House
- https://kids.takahashiryuiki.com/building/
Last verified: 2026.08.06