Kubura Family Residence Main House

What is the Kubura Family Residence Main House?

The Kubura Family Residence Main House (久部良家住宅主屋, Kubura-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a one-story timber dwelling built in the mid-Meiji period and standing at 365 Aza-Yonaguni in Yonaguni Town, Okinawa Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on October 2, 2007.

The house was not built on Yonaguni. It is said to have come from Ishigaki Dunchi (石垣殿内), a residence in what is now Ishigaki City, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs gives 1940 as the year it was moved. A house raised on Ishigaki in the late nineteenth century thus crossed the sea some fifty years later and began a second life on Japan's westernmost inhabited island.

Its registration number is 47-0056. The stone wall registered on the same day (47-0057) completes the Kubura compound.

Why the Kubura main house was registered

The Kubura Family Residence Main House was registered as contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency's note acknowledges alterations along the outer edge of the house but finds that the main body keeps its original form well.

It measures 12 meters across the front (Ketayuki) by 11 meters deep (Harima), with a building area of 160 square meters. Over this nearly square plan sits a Yosemune-zukuri roof, a hipped form that slopes down on all four sides, laid in Hongawarabuki with alternating flat and rounded tiles. Because every face of the roof falls from the ridge, no triangular gable shows from any side.

Being a relocated building did not count against it. The Kubura house carries its story of descent from Ishigaki Dunchi, and on top of that more than sixty years on its Yonaguni plot by the time of registration; it was on those terms that the Agency counted it part of the island's landscape.

Four rooms in the shape of a character

The plan of the Kubura main house is built around two large front rooms, the ichibanza and the nibanza, each of 10 tatami mats. Behind each lies a back room, or uraza. Two rooms in front and two behind form a grid that, seen from above, resembles the Japanese character 田, meaning rice field. The Agency describes it as a ta-no-ji plan, literally a plan shaped like the character ta.

Put the ichibanza and nibanza together and the front of the house alone offers 20 mats of floor. All four rooms fit under a single roof only a little longer on one side than the other.

Changes along the line of eave posts

Traditional Okinawan houses push their eaves well out and carry them on a row of outer posts, creating a sheltered strip around the building called the Amahaji. The Agency specifically notes that the line of these amahaji posts on the Kubura Family Residence Main House has been altered.

In the Agency's reading, the changes are confined to this outer zone, while the core of the house, its rooms and roof frame, keeps the old arrangement. For a building that has been dismantled and rebuilt across the sea, it is striking that the alterations stayed at the edges. No public record says when or how the amahaji line was changed.

Seeing the Kubura Family Residence Main House

The Kubura Family Residence Main House is a private home. The interior is not open and visitors cannot enter the grounds, so the house is seen from the street over the stone wall. From there the tiled roof can be read clearly as it drops evenly on each side, and its spread gives a fair idea of the size of the plan beneath.

The rooms and the altered amahaji posts are hard to make out from outside. With the Agency's description in mind, it is worth picturing the four-room grid tucked under that roof. There is no official guidance on photography; out of respect for the household, please do not photograph into the house from the gateway.