Togei Family Residence Main House

What Is the Togei Family Residence Main House?

The Togei Family Residence Main House (東迎家住宅主屋, Tōgei-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-storey timber farmhouse built in 1953 in the Sonai settlement of Yonaguni Town, Okinawa Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on March 7, 2008.

Yonaguni is the westernmost inhabited island in Japan, at the far end of the Yaeyama chain. Sonai, on the north shore, is the island's main village and the seat of the town office. The house stands at 151-1 Yonaguni, roughly 150 meters north of the town office on the map.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the family name as Tōgei. The same homestead holds four other registered structures: a well, a large stone basin called an ichitarai, a rainwater tank, and a stone wall. All five were entered on the register on the same day, and the Togei Family Residence Main House is the building the others are arranged around, facing south near the middle of the plot.

Why It Was Registered

Each property on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties is listed under a stated criterion. The Togei Family Residence Main House was registered as a building that "serves as a model of form." The well and the stone wall on the same plot were listed for a different reason, their contribution to the historic landscape. In other words, the house itself was judged to be a textbook example of its type.

What the Agency's description singles out is how much of the traditional Yaeyama house survives here, both in layout and in materials. The house went up in 1953, less than a decade after the Second World War, and its builders kept to the plan and building habits the islands had used for generations. A renovation followed in 1985, yet the hipped red-tile roof, the covered veranda along the front and the sequence of formal rooms were all still in place when the house was registered.

Its registration number is 47-0061, the first of five consecutive numbers (47-0061 through 47-0065) given to the homestead.

What to Look For

A Hipped Roof of Ryukyu Red Tiles

The Togei Family Residence Main House measures 7 ken across the front and 4 ken deep, with a building area of 128 square meters. The roof is a Yosemune-zukuri hipped roof, sloping down on all four sides, and it is covered in the orange-red Ryukyu tiles that give the villages of Okinawa their color. A low one-storey body under a broad tiled roof is the classic silhouette of a Yaeyama farmhouse.

The Amahaji and the Front Rooms

Along the south front runs an amahaji (雨端), a deep eave carried on posts that creates a shaded strip between house and yard. On an island of hard sun and wind-driven rain, the amahaji keeps both off the walls and the front rooms.

Inside, two main rooms sit side by side at the front, the ichibanza and the nibanza, each with a smaller back room (uraza) behind it, plus a kitchen. In Okinawan homes the ichibanza has traditionally been the room for receiving guests and the nibanza the room for the family altar.

Chāgi Timber and Daimyō Bamboo

The posts and beams are made of chāgi, the Okinawan name for Podocarpus (inumaki), a wood long valued on the islands for resisting insect damage. Daimyō bamboo was used for the floor framing and for the sheathing that sits under the roof tiles. The choice of materials is part of what makes the Togei Family Residence Main House a faithful record of how a Yaeyama house was put together in 1953.

Visiting the Togei Family Residence Main House

The Togei Family Residence Main House is a private home and is not open to the public. The Yonaguni Tourism Association lists no visiting arrangements for it (checked September 2026). There is no access to the grounds, the veranda or the interior.

If you walk through Sonai, view the house only from the public road, and avoid photographing into the property or its residents.

Yonaguni is reached by Ryukyu Air Commuter flights: about 30 minutes from Ishigaki (3 flights a day) or about 1 hour 20 minutes from Naha. The Ferry Yonakuni sails from Ishigaki twice a week and takes about 4 hours. On the island, a free town-run bus links the three villages of Sonai, Kubura and Higawa, and car rental counters operate at the airport and in Sonai.