Fujimoto Family Residence

The Fujimoto Family Residence

The Fujimoto Family Residence (藤本家住宅, Fujimoto-ke Jūtaku) is a walled homestead in Fujiidera City, Osaka Prefecture, where a late Edo-period main house and nine further buildings were each listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 18, 2006. It stands on the east side of the lane that runs due south from the Great South Gate of Fujiidera temple (葛井寺), and its outer walls and fences trace the full length of the plot's west and south edges.

Japan registers buildings one at a time, so the estate carries ten consecutive register numbers, from 27-0389 for the main house to 27-0398 for the east barn. Two are living quarters (the main house and an annex), two are gates (front and back), four are storehouses (for tools, clothing, and two for rice) and two are barns. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the main house and the clothing storehouse to the late Edo period and the other eight to the early Meiji period, and lists all ten under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

Osaka Bunkazai Navi, a heritage guide run by the Osaka Association of Architects and Building Engineers with partner groups, describes the Fujimoto Family Residence as a farmhouse compound with a strong streak of the urban townhouse (Machiya) about it, and singles out the refinement of its overall design. The buildings remain in private hands.

A House on a Temple Approach

Fujiidera is the fifth stop on the Saigoku pilgrimage to thirty-three temples of the Kannon bodhisattva, and pilgrims have been walking to it for centuries. The lane outside the Fujimoto Family Residence is the temple's southern approach.

According to Osaka Bunkazai Navi, the land in front of the Great South Gate was once lined with substantial homesteads. Most of the houses faced south and turned their flanks to the lane, and the Fujimoto estate follows the same habit: what a passer-by sees is not a row of front doors but a long run of side walls and fencing.

The Agency's own notes call the west wall of the main house, which meets the lane directly, the core of the historic streetscape. The ten buildings were registered less as individual showpieces than as the pieces that together make up the estate's outer shell.

Walking the Perimeter of the Fujimoto Family Residence

The plan of the Fujimoto Family Residence makes most sense on foot. Heading south from the temple gate, the west edge presents, in order, the tool storehouse, the front gate, the main house, the clothing storehouse and the west barn. The front gate sits between the tool storehouse and a lavatory added to the western end of the main house's north side.

Turn east at the southwest corner and the south edge begins: the long, narrow east barn runs on from the west barn, then comes the back gate, and at the southeast corner the gable end of the south rice storehouse faces the street. Along both frontages the walls share one recipe, vertical board wainscoting below and lime plaster (Shikkui) above, so the corner reads as a single continuous facade.

Inside, the main house stands just west of centre with its entrance facing north. Visitors entering by the front gate would find the bamboo-fenced garden of the main house's reception rooms on their right and an entrance forecourt ahead, with the tool storehouse and the annex beyond it to the north. The north rice storehouse abuts the main house on the east. The southern half of the plot is a work yard, reached through the back gate, and the east barn stands open along its yard side.

Look at the roofs, too. The tool, clothing and north rice storehouses carry heavy round-tile roofs (Hongawarabuki), while the main house, annex, gates, barns and south rice storehouse use the lighter interlocking pantile (Sangawara-buki); every roof is a simple gable (Kirizuma-zukuri). The two gates are colour-coded as well: black plaster on the front gate, white on the back.

Visiting the Fujimoto Family Residence

The Fujimoto Family Residence is a private home and is not open to the public; Osaka Bunkazai Navi lists it as closed to visitors. Its west and south sides border public lanes, and those two frontages are where the buildings can be seen.

The nearest station is Fujiidera on the Kintetsu Minami-Osaka Line. Fujiidera City's access page puts it two stops from Osaka-Abenobashi by semi-express, about 15 minutes. Fujiidera temple is roughly a five-minute walk south of the station; from the Great South Gate, follow the lane south and the west wall of the estate comes into view. Allow about 10 minutes on foot from the station.

Photograph only from the street, and avoid peering through the gates or lingering at them. This is still a lived-in home, and the visit is a slow walk around its outer walls rather than a tour.