Former Yonaguni Family Residence

What Is the Former Yonaguni Family Residence?

The Former Yonaguni Family Residence (旧与那国家住宅, Kyū Yonaguni-ke Jūtaku) is a house built in 1913 at 536 Taketomi on Taketomi Island, Taketomi Town, Okinawa Prefecture, and it was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on December 4, 2007.

The name can mislead: Yonaguni here is a family name, and the house is on Taketomi, a small coral island a short boat ride from Ishigaki, not on Yonaguni Island. It stands in the Higashi-yashiki (東屋敷) settlement near the middle of the island. The Yonaguni house follows the Okinawan pattern of separate buildings for living and cooking, with the main house, the fūya, beside a kitchen building, the tōra. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it is the westernmost building in Japan to hold Important Cultural Property status.

The agency's account says the Yonaguni family branched off from a main family elsewhere on the island in the middle of the Meiji era (roughly the 1880s) and settled on this plot. Today the house belongs to Taketomi Town and is run by the Taketomijima Regional Foundation.

Why the Former Yonaguni Family Residence Is Protected

The designation was made under the criterion for buildings that show a school or regional character to a marked degree. The agency points to two things: the household layout centered on the fūya and tōra survives much as it had been arranged by the years before the Second World War, and the house is the core of the preserved village on Taketomi. Together, it says, they make the Former Yonaguni Family Residence a valuable source for understanding how people on the island lived in the modern era.

The protection covers more than one building. The fūya is the designated structure, the tōra is attached to it as a Tsuketari (an associated item), and the 856.19-square-meter plot is included too, with its coral-stone boundary wall (gukku), the screen wall in front of the house (maiyashi), the shrine to the household deity (jījon) and the old animal shed. House, enclosure and shrine are treated as one homestead, which is how they worked in daily life.

Taketomi's village is itself an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings for its traditional buildings, and the Yonaguni house is the place where you can walk into one of its homesteads and see the whole arrangement up close.

The Fūya and Its Unusual Room Names

The fūya is a Yosemune-zukuri (hipped-roof) building 8.7 meters by 7.8 meters, roofed in Hongawarabuki interlocking tiles, with the northwest corner pushed out by half a bay on each side. An inscription on the ridge beam dates it to 1913 and names the carpenter as Matsutake Kana (松竹加那).

Inside the fūya of the Former Yonaguni Family Residence, the rooms fall into three columns. The east column holds the ichibanza and the first rear room; the middle column, from front to back, holds the rukukwin, the nibanza and the second rear room; the west column holds the sanjakō, the sanbanza, the kamānohata and the kūru. A veranda called the funtā runs along the south and east sides. The ichibanza has a Tokonoma alcove and the nibanza has shelving at the back. The ichibanza, nibanza, rukukwin and funtā have board-and-batten ceilings, and the other rooms leave the roof structure exposed.

In this house the east is the senior side. The foundation explains that the ichibanza was the most formal room, used to receive guests and for household religious rites; the nibanza held the family altar and served for Buddhist observances; and the sanbanza was the everyday living room.

The smaller rooms are explained differently depending on the source. The agency describes the rukukwin as the children's bedroom, the sanjakō as a gathering place for the daughters, the kamānohata as the spot for boiling and drinking tea, and the kūru as a store for jars. The foundation instead calls the sanjakō a room where household helpers waited and the kūru a food store, and says the house had both a rukukwin and a sanjakō because it received many important visitors. It also suggests that, although cooking on Taketomi was done in a separate building, a small hearth was kept in the kamānohata so tea could be served to guests at once.

The Tōra and the Homestead Around It

The tōra kitchen building dates from about 1935. Its walls are reinforced concrete, but it wears the same hipped roof of interlocking tiles as the fūya. It measures 5.7 meters by 3.8 meters, with a storage lean-to on the west and, on the north, a reinforced concrete boiler room and a concrete-block bathroom.

The boiler room started out as a water tank. Before piped water reached the island, rain from the fūya's gutters was led into it and stored for the household, so the pairing of the two buildings also solved the problem of where the water came from.

Take a turn around the yard of the Former Yonaguni Family Residence. In front of the fūya stands the maiyashi, a stone screen wall that blocks the view into the house, the feature called Hinpun elsewhere in Okinawa. The gukku wall rings the plot with a windbreak of fukugi trees planted just inside it, the jījon shrine sits in the northeast corner, and the animal shed survives behind the tōra.

Visiting the Former Yonaguni Family Residence

The Former Yonaguni Family Residence is owned by Taketomi Town and opened to visitors by the Taketomijima Regional Foundation. The foundation asks visitors to take off shoes or beach sandals before stepping up into the building, not to smoke or use fire on the grounds, not to damage or mark anything, and to take their rubbish away. As a protected building it has no barrier-free adaptations, so wheelchair users will need someone to assist them. There is no official guidance on photography.

The foundation's website lists opening hours and admission as "in preparation" (checked October 2026). The town ordinance that governs the house sets opening hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closes it on days of island festivals such as Tanadui, and fixes admission at 300 yen per visit for high school students and older. Whether the fee is actually being collected on site could not be confirmed, so it is worth calling the foundation (0980-85-2800, Japanese) before you go.

Boats to Taketomi leave from the remote islands terminal at Ishigaki Port, and Taketomi Town gives the crossing as about 15 minutes. From Taketomi East Port, the foundation says, the house is about 15 minutes on foot, about 5 minutes by bus to the nearest stop, Nakasuji-ido (仲筋井戸), or about 5 minutes by taxi. The foundation also collects a 300-yen island entry fee per person for conservation, sold from ticket machines at the Ishigaki Port terminal and at the Kariyushi-kan building at Taketomi East Port.