Former Ueda Family Residence Main House

About the Former Ueda Family Residence Main House

The Former Ueda Family Residence Main House (旧植田家住宅主屋, Kyū-Uedake Jūtaku Shuoku) in Uematsu-cho, Yao City, Osaka Prefecture is a late Edo period house at the heart of the former kaisho, or estate office, of the Yasunaka Shinden reclaimed fields, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on March 27, 2006 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a two-storey timber building with a tiled roof and a building area of 284 square metres; registration number 27-0361.

A Large House with a Low Upper Floor

The Former Ueda Family Residence Main House faces northwest on a site on the left bank of the Nagase River. It measures 21 metres by 11 metres under a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles; only the lean-to Geya roof across the front is laid with Hongawarabuki round-and-flat tiles (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The upper floor is a low Tsushi-nikai, its walls plastered over and pierced by Mushiko-mado slatted windows, and it too holds a tatami room.

Inside, the north half of the house is an earth-floored Doma and the south half raised living rooms (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The museum plan divides the doma into a front and a rear section, with the kamaya, the cooking hearth area, at the back. On the raised side, rooms run from the front room with its formal Shikidai step back to the Buddhist altar room and the reception rooms.

Why It Was Registered

The Former Ueda Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The official site notes that most of the reclamation kaisho once found in Osaka Prefecture have been lost, and values the way this one keeps both its buildings and its site.

In a 2006 site talk, Professor Mori Takao of Kansai University explained that the house preserves both a formal side, where high-ranking guests were received at the shikidai step, and the everyday living space of a local farming household (Kansai University).

The Kaisho Frame in the Doma

The Former Ueda Family Residence Main House did not reach its present form all at once. The official site dates it to the late Edo period and says its doma may keep the form it had in the kaisho days. A Yao City Board of Education paper notes that the frame of the house already appears on a family geomantic house plan of 1822, that the beams over the doma are old, and that the living and reception rooms went through major remodelling in the Meiji and Taisho eras (Kansai University).

The restoration took the house's Meiji and Taisho appearance as its target, a bridge between the kaisho era and the Showa-period rooms (Kansai University). Stand in the doma, look up at the posts and beams, then compare them with the neat joinery of the reception rooms, and the layers of time in the house become easy to sense.

What to Look For

From the front of the Former Ueda Family Residence Main House, check that only the lean-to roof uses round-and-flat tiles, and find the slatted windows in the plastered upper wall (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Inside, the front doma lets you look up into the raised rooms.

In Professor Mori's account, guests who stepped up at the shikidai passed through an anteroom to an office-like room, while the most important visitors were entertained in the innermost room with its Tokonoma alcove and staggered shelves (Kansai University). Walk the rooms in that order and the rising rank of each space becomes clear.

Visiting

The interior of the Former Ueda Family Residence Main House is open. The museum leaflet invites visitors to experience old daily life in the reception rooms, the kamaya and the tsushi upper floor; household tools of the Ueda family are on permanent display, and the hanging scrolls are changed with the seasons and exhibitions (museum leaflet; Yao City). Opening hours and admission are given on the Former Ueda Family Residence page.