Iritakenishi Family Residence

What is the Iritakenishi Family Residence?

The Iritakenishi Family Residence (入嵩西家住宅, Iritakenishi-ke Jūtaku) is a farming household's compound in Shinkawa, Ishigaki City, Okinawa Prefecture, centred on a main house built around 1911, and its main house, maigusuku screen wall, stone wall and well were entered on Japan's register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on July 31, 2007.

All four entries share the same lot number, 151 Shinkawa, and carry consecutive registration numbers, 47-0041 to 47-0044. Their dates spread over about four decades: the well from the late Meiji period, the house from around 1911, the maigusuku from around 1914 and the stone wall from 1948. The compound was not built in one campaign. It grew and changed over generations.

Each of the four was registered under the same criterion, that it contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The value lies less in any single structure than in the way the house and its stonework survive together as one farmstead.

A Farmstead in the Mafutanee Quarter of Shinkawa

The Iritakenishi Family Residence stands in a part of Shinkawa known locally as Mafutanee. According to Ishigaki City, the quarter still keeps the compound layouts and building arrangements of traditional farmhouses.

The house was built for a prosperous, hard-working farmer, and it shows: there are many rooms, and the kitchen is unusually large. Tradition holds that it was framed in high-grade island timber, including inumaki (Podocarpus), mokkoku and fukugi.

The city singles out the Iritakenishi Family Residence as a well-preserved example of the way farm compounds were laid out in the Yaeyama Islands. Here a red-tiled house, the screen wall before it, the stone boundary wall and a well in one corner all survive within a single plot.

How the Compound Is Laid Out

The Iritakenishi site is bounded by roads on three sides, north, east and south. The main house sits roughly in the middle of the plot and faces south.

Between the house and the southern road stands the maigusuku, a freestanding screen wall. Walls in this position, blocking the view from the gate into the house, are a fixture of Okinawan homesteads and are better known on the main island of Okinawa as hinpun.

The east and south sides of the plot are closed by a stone wall about 53 meters long in total. On the south side, about 16 meters from the western end, a gap of just over 3 meters forms the entrance, flanked by a pair of stone gateposts. The well lies in the southwest corner.

Both the stone wall and the maigusuku are built of dressed blocks of a local stone called awaishi. Ishigaki City records that the wall was rebuilt this way around 1948, replacing an older wall of rough, uncut Ryukyu limestone laid in the Nozurazumi manner.

Visiting the Iritakenishi Family Residence

The Iritakenishi Family Residence is a private home, and there is no announced public opening. You cannot enter the grounds or the house, so a visit means looking at the exterior from the street. Please keep it brief and quiet, and avoid peering in through the gateway or lingering with a camera.

Because the plot faces roads on three sides, the long runs of the east and south stone walls can be seen from the street. The main house and the maigusuku stand inside the wall, and how much of them you can see depends on where you stand.

From New Ishigaki Airport (Painushima Ishigaki Airport), Azuma Bus airport routes run to the downtown bus terminal; the airport operator gives about 25 minutes by taxi to the Ishigaki Port Ferry Terminal. The residence lies in a quiet residential area about 1.5 kilometers northwest of the port district, around 20 minutes on foot. No visitor parking is provided.