Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor

What Is the Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor?

The Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor (辻本店奥座敷, Tsuji Honten Okuzashiki) is a detached guest wing of the mid-Meiji period (1883 to 1897) standing north of the clothing storehouse at the Tsuji Honten sake brewery in Katsuyama, Maniwa City, Okayama Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. It was altered in the Taisho period (1912 to 1926).

The Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor is a single-storey timber building with a footprint of 121 square meters. Its Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof is laid with Sangawara-buki tiles, and lean-to eaves, or Geya, run along its east and west sides. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it a carefully finished detached parlor.

A Wing Built for Guests

The main room of the Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor is eight tatami mats in size and has a Tokonoma alcove, display shelves and a Tsukeshoin writing bay. In the adjoining room a formal entrance with a Shikidai step opens west toward the front gate. A guest who came through the gate could step straight up into the parlor without passing through the shop or the family rooms.

On the south side is a secondary entrance under its own hip-and-gable roof, and to the north are a dressing room, a bath and a lavatory. Everything an overnight guest needed was contained within the wing.

The brewery says that heads of the Tsuji family from the Meiji to the Showa period painted and wrote calligraphy themselves and received many writers and artists, among them the poets Yosano Tekkan and Akiko, who stayed with the family. Which rooms such guests used is not recorded, but the plan leaves no doubt that the Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor was built for entertaining.

Why the Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor Was Registered

The Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. Together with the front gate and wall, the garden wall and the household shrine, it preserves the full setting in which a brewery owner received his guests.

The alignment of the formal entrance with the front gate says a great deal. Separate from the comings and goings of the shop, the family laid out a dignified route reserved for visitors, and the arrangement of the buildings still shows it.

Visiting the Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor

The Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor stands on private ground behind the front gate and is not open to the public. No special openings were found to be announced.

From the street you can see only as far as the gate and wall in front of the Tsuji Honten Rear Parlor. Standing before the gate, you are on the axis that leads to the formal entrance beyond. Please do not go through the gate. Directions and visiting conditions for the whole site are on the Tsuji Honten Sake Brewery page.