Arakaki Family Residence Main House

The House at the Centre of the Compound

Arakaki Family Residence Main House (新垣家住宅主屋, Arakaki-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-storey timber home built in 1956 in Shuri Sueyoshi, Naha City, Okinawa, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 31 July 2007. It has a tiled hipped roof and a building area of 97 square metres.

The plot faces south, and the house sits a little north of centre. The hinpun screen stands in front of it, two small ponds lie to the east and south-east, and the stone pigsty toilet is to the west. Everything else on the plot is arranged around this house.

The stone wall and hinpun date from around 1896; the Arakaki Family Residence Main House is postwar. Of the six registered items it is the only building. The other five are all stonework.

Size and Floor Plan

The house measures 6.5 ken by 4 ken (the ken is the traditional Japanese bay unit), under a hipped roof of red tiles that slopes down on all four sides.

The plan splits neatly east and west. On the east side are two tatami rooms, one of six mats and one of four and a half. On the west side are a board-floored kitchen and an earth-floored Doma. The front entrance opens on the south side of the kitchen, facing the same way as the plot.

Living rooms to the east, cooking and work to the west: it is a compact, practical layout, with nothing much beyond what a household needed.

Why It Was Registered

The house was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out its red-tiled roof as part of a townscape found only in Okinawa.

Registration normally applies to structures at least 50 years old. Built in 1956, the Arakaki Family Residence Main House had only just passed that mark when it was registered.

A red-roofed postwar house inside Meiji-era stonework is the point of interest here. The gap in dates between the house and the walls around it is a plain record of a home being rebuilt within an older setting.

What to Notice and Visiting

The roof is the feature to look for: red tile falling away on all four sides, set against the pale grey of the Ryukyu limestone in the wall and the hinpun.

This is a private home and the interior is not open. Because the house stands toward the back of the plot with the hinpun between it and the road, we have not been able to confirm how much of the roof is visible from the street. Stay off the property, and keep residents and the inside of the house out of any photographs.