Mizote Family Residence Main House

A Thatched House at the Centre

Mizote Family Residence Main House (溝手家住宅主屋, Mizote-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is the thatched farmhouse at the heart of a wealthy farming family's estate in Hayashima, Okayama Prefecture; its core is thought to date to the mid-Edo period, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2021.

This is the family's main dwelling, a two-storey timber house with a footprint of 494 square metres. The Mizote served as village officials from the 17th century, and this building was where household and estate business was run. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives its date as mid-Edo but also records work around 1845 and an addition in 1860, so the Mizote Family Residence Main House is best read as a house that grew over several generations.

Why It Was Registered

The house was registered under number 33-0337 for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency's note singles out one feature above all: the broad, unhurried sweep of the roof.

That roof is a thatched irimoya (hip-and-gable) form running north to south, with tiled sections added. In the sequence of gate, front garden and house that defines the Mizote estate, the Mizote Family Residence Main House is the anchor: everything else is arranged around it.

What to Look For

On the east front, a hip-and-gable entrance porch projects from the house. Its roof uses shikoro-buki, a technique in which the upper and lower slopes are laid as separate planes with a visible step between them. The porch and a lean-to beside it are covered in heavy hongawara tiles, a deliberate contrast with the soft mass of thatch above. The Council for Cultural Affairs, in its advisory report, called this frontage imposing.

The formal back parlour occupies the southeast corner, wrapped on two sides by an L-shaped veranda of the kind called kirime-en, where the floorboards run crosswise to the edge.

To the west, across a small inner courtyard, a two-storey tiled wing was added. Old thatched block and newer tiled block form a single house around that courtyard. The west wall of the earth-floored work area has a doorway into No. 3 Storehouse, once the rice store, so grain could be reached without stepping outside.

Visiting

The Mizote Family Residence Main House is a private home and its interior is not open. It stands in the middle of the compound, with the nagayamon gate and front garden between it and the road, so it can barely be seen from outside.

Realistically, the gate on the east side is as close as a visitor gets. Stay on the public road and keep any photography to what can be seen from there.