Arakaki Family Residence (Tsuboya, Naha City, Okinawa Prefecture)

What the Arakaki Family Residence is

The Arakaki Family Residence (新垣家住宅, also romanized Aragaki-ke Jūtaku) in Tsuboya, Naha City, Okinawa Prefecture, is a potter's homestead whose main house dates from before the late 19th century, and its four buildings, the Main House, workshop, annex and climbing kiln, were designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on December 26, 2002.

The full official name is Arakaki Family Residence (Tsuboya, Naha City, Okinawa Prefecture). The Agency for Cultural Affairs reads the surname as Aragaki, while Naha City's tourism listings use the more common Okinawan reading, Arakaki. Tsuboya, southeast of Kokusai-dori, is Naha's pottery quarter; it was created in 1682, under the Ryukyu Kingdom, when kilns from several places were brought together on this one site.

According to Naha City, the Arakaki family is said to have moved here from Yomitan around the time of that consolidation, held the gentry title of pechin for generations and played a leading part in the Tsuboya pottery trade. Pottery was made on the premises until 1974. On a plot of about 400 tsubo (roughly 1,300 square meters) stand the red-tiled Main House, the workshop, the annex and the climbing kiln, along with a stone fuuru (a combined pigsty and toilet) and stone walls.

Why the Arakaki Family Residence is an Important Cultural Property

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Arakaki Family Residence as the only potter's house left in Tsuboya, once the center of Okinawan ceramics. It is a large walled compound that keeps almost every part of a working pottery household around its Main House, which makes it essential for understanding both Okinawan domestic architecture and the history of Tsuboya. The Arakaki Family Residence was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2002 under the criterion of outstanding regional character.

The Agency dates the Main House to the later 19th century, at the end of the Edo period, and the workshop, annex and kiln to before the end of the Meiji era in 1912. The house is thought to have been built by the late 1800s, with the compound taking its present form by about 1912 at the latest.

The Main House joins two blocks. The ufuya measures 8.6 by 10.6 meters, with a hipped roof (Yosemune-zukuri) of traditional round-and-flat tiles (Hongawarabuki) and a projection on the north. Attached to its west, set about one bay further south, is the tonguwa, 7.0 by 9.9 meters, with a projection on the south. Naha City notes that the ufuya has a six-mat first room with an alcove, an eight-mat second room with the family altar, and back rooms behind, while the tonguwa, the kitchen wing, has a brick hearth.

The workshop measures 7.5 by 5.7 meters with lean-to roofs on the south and west. The annex, 6.6 by 5.4 meters with a hipped tiled roof, was also originally a workshop.

Agari-nu-kama, the kiln of the Arakaki Family Residence

The showpiece of the Arakaki Family Residence is the climbing kiln on the east side of the compound, known as Agari-nu-kama, the "East Kiln." The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a multi-chambered climbing kiln 22.7 meters long and 4.0 meters wide: a stoking area, a firebox, nine firing chambers and a flue climb the slope in a single line. The kiln itself is built of clay, and everything except the flue at the top sits under a long shed, 19.6 meters in length, roofed with tiles and sheet iron.

A Naha City public bulletin describes it as a prewar kiln for glazed ware that survives in nearly complete form, and notes that the potter Kinjo Jiro fired his work here during his Tsuboya years.

Stand at the lower end and look up: the narrow roof climbs the hillside chamber after chamber. Heat in such a kiln is passed upward from one chamber to the next, and the building wears that logic on the outside.

The compound is worth reading as a whole. Naha City describes it as facing south, walled in stone on the street sides to the south and west. At the gate, the annex is on your right and the workshop on your left, a chiburu-shisa, a lion-dog head with no body, perched on the workshop roof. A gently rising stone path leads to a hinpun, here a hedge screen, with the Main House behind it, the kiln to its east and the fuuru to its west.

Visiting the Arakaki Family Residence

Naha City opens the Arakaki Family Residence on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays (with some exceptions) from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. There are occasional unscheduled closures, and it is closed for the New Year period from December 28 to January 4. According to the Tsuboya Pottery Museum, admission is free.

Only part of the site, centered on the kiln, is open. The areas where the owners live are off-limits, and the city asks visitors neither to enter nor to photograph them, so the Main House is seen from the path. Eating, smoking and pets (other than assistance dogs) are not allowed, and the stone steps get slippery when wet.

The Arakaki Family Residence is about a 10-minute walk from Asato Station on the Yui Rail monorail, or a 1-minute walk from the Tsuboya bus stop. There is no parking and no toilet on site; the nearby Naha City Tsuboya Pottery Museum (098-862-3761) makes a convenient base and handles inquiries about opening days.