Former Nashiro Family Residence Main House

What is the Former Nashiro Family Residence Main House?

The Former Nashiro Family Residence Main House (旧名城家住宅主屋, Kyū Nashiro-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-story timber Ryukyuan farmhouse built in 1905 in Serikyaku, Izena Village, Okinawa Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on November 29, 2016.

It is the dwelling at the heart of the Nashiro compound, set inside a wall of coral stone. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a one-story wooden building with a tiled roof and a building area of 119 square meters. Izena Village owns it.

Why the main house was registered

The Nashiro main house was registered under the criterion of being a model of architectural form. In the Agency's assessment, it keeps the traditional Ryukyuan house type intact.

Four features are singled out. The reception rooms and the kitchen sit under separate roofs. The roof is laid with red Ryukyu tiles whose joints are sealed with white lime plaster, or Shikkui. The reception side is two rooms wide, the ichibanza and the nibanza, each backed by a smaller rear room called an uraza. Along the front runs a deep Amahaji, the roofed veranda that shades Okinawan houses from sun and squalls.

In a typical Okinawan house the ichibanza is the best room, used to receive guests, and the nibanza holds the family altar. At the Nashiro house the nibanza is split into front and back rooms, a plan the Agency identifies with the upper-class houses of Izena.

What to look for at the Former Nashiro Family Residence Main House

Start with the roof. Lines of white plaster outline every row of red tiles, so the surface reads almost as a pattern from across the yard. Because the reception wing and the kitchen wing have their own ridges, you see two roofs leaning together rather than one large one.

The amahaji along the front is carried on slender posts. In the village's photographs taken after the restoration, each post stands on its own stone footing, and the board walls and sliding doors show fresh timber.

The village's tenant guidelines list the rooms: an ichibanza of 6 tatami mats, a nibanza of 3 mats, an altar room of 3 mats, a sanbanza of about 4 mats, and three rear rooms of roughly 3, 3 and 5 mats. Counting the nibanza and the altar room separately matches the front-and-back division described by the Agency. The rooms are small on their own; with the sliding doors open they join into one airy space, which is how Ryukyuan houses were meant to be lived in.

Restoration of the Nashiro main house

Izena Village restored the house as part of a program that turns empty old houses into homes for families moving to the island, and the work was completed in March 2015. Photographs from before the project show board walls weathered to grey and grass growing up around the veranda.

The restoration kept the single-story timber structure and the red tile roof, while fitting an induction-hob kitchen, a prefabricated bathroom, a toilet and a washroom inside. The village gives the building area as 119.2 square meters and the floor area as 90.8 square meters. Registration followed in 2016, the year after the work was finished.

Visiting the Former Nashiro Family Residence Main House

The Former Nashiro Family Residence Main House is a home rented out by the village, and the interior is not open to the public. If you are able to enter the plot through the south gate in the stone wall, the veranda and the tiled roof can be seen at close range. Tenants are asked to let visitors onto the grounds, but no current information on viewing is published, so check with the Izena Village Office before you go.

There is no official guidance on photography. Please do not photograph through windows or intrude on the household's daily life.