Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House

What is the Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House?

The Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House (末吉家住宅主屋, Sueyoshi-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a one-story stone house of the early Showa period, built between 1926 and 1945, at 41 Aza-Minato in Kitadaito Village, Okinawa Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on July 31, 2007.

Its registration number is 47-0050. The stone wall around the same plot was registered on the same day under the next number.

The house stands on the main road in the northwest of Kitadaito Island, the road that leads down to West Port, once the loading point for the island's phosphate ore. Most registered houses in Japan are timber. This one is limestone, under a sheet-metal roof, and that alone sets the Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House apart.

Why the Sueyoshi main house was registered

The criterion was contribution to the historic landscape of the country. In its note on the building, the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls the Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House a remnant of the earliest residential development on the island.

That phrase carries more weight once you know the island's story. Kitadaito had no inhabitants until settlers arrived around the turn of the twentieth century. Phosphate mining started in 1919, and with it came machinery, workers and the need for somewhere to live near West Port. The Sueyoshi house belongs to that first wave of building along the road to the harbor, and it is still a home.

Most of the mining-era buildings were lost or left in ruins after the mine closed in 1950. The storage bunkers and loading pier show the industrial side of that period. The Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House shows the domestic side.

Coursed limestone and concrete corners

The house measures 13 meters along its length (Ketayuki) and 8.4 meters across (Harima), with a building area of 107 square meters. The roof is hipped, in the Yosemune-zukuri form, and covered in sheet metal. The entrance is on a long side, parallel to the ridge, an arrangement called Hirairi.

The walls are limestone laid in Nunozumi courses: each row of stones is brought to an even height so that the horizontal joints run straight across the face. Only the corners are different. They are formed in concrete, closing off the ends of each stone wall.

Inside, according to the Agency, the joinery and fittings use biro, the Chinese fan palm. Kitadaito Village has adopted the local Daito fan palm as its official tree. A stone shell with palm-wood finishes inside is an unusual pairing, and a very island one.

What to look for at the Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House

Start with the stonework. The boundary wall around the plot is built from roughly squared, irregular blocks fitted together, while the walls of the Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House are laid in level courses. It is the same limestone handled two different ways, and the contrast only becomes obvious when you look at house and wall side by side.

Then look at the corners. The coursed stone stops at each of the four corners and gives way to concrete. The Agency records the same method at the Former Toyo Sugar Kitadaito Branch Office nearby, the headquarters of the phosphate business, so here a company building technique turns up in a private home.

Being single-story and 13 meters long, the house reads as low and wide from the road, with the four slopes of its metal hipped roof resting directly on the stone walls.

Visiting the Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House

The Sueyoshi Family Residence Main House is a private home. The interior is not open, and neither are the grounds, so a visit means looking at the exterior from the road. The coursed walls and the concrete corners can both be made out from outside the plot.

There is no official guidance on photography. If you take pictures, keep the residents and their daily life out of frame, and do not aim into the property. How to reach Kitadaito, and how to get from the airport to the port area, are covered on the Sueyoshi Family Residence (Kitadaito) page.