Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House

About the Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House

The Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House (藤野家住宅東門及び長屋, Fujino-ke Jūtaku Higashimon oyobi Nagaya) is a 1-story wooden gate building built in 1874 in Fujiidera 2-chome, Fujiidera City, Osaka Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2012.

The Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House stands northeast of the main house with its ridge running north to south. It is a long, narrow nagaya, or row building, 16.8 m by 4.9 m, under a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles, with a building area of 83 square meters. The east gate opens toward its north end, close to the entrance of the main house. South of the gate is an attendants' room, and to the north are a cow stall, an eight-mat room and other spaces.

It is the only one of the nine registered Fujino structures that the Agency for Cultural Affairs dates to 1874, which makes it the oldest of them. It is 19 years older than the main house of 1893, and so the first building of the estate as it stands today.

What the Fujino East Gate and Row House was for

The Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the country. Gathering a gate, a room for people and a stall for livestock under one roof, it forms the northern end of the row of outbuildings along the east side of the estate.

What sits on either side of the gate tells you what kind of building it is. The attendants' room was for servants who came with a visitor, and the main gate has one too. The cow stall, on the other hand, points to a household that kept cattle, most likely for work in the fields. The Fujino family served as Shōya daikan, headmen of Fujiidera Village, in the Edo period, and their estate was both a place to receive guests and a working farm. Both sides of that life share this one building.

The east gate opens near the north end, close to the door of the main house. If the north main gate was the formal gate for guests, the east gate was probably the everyday way in from the road on the east side.

What to look for at the Fujino East Gate and Row House

The outer walls are Shikkui plaster in Ōkabe style, with the posts buried inside the wall. They are pierced by Yorikimado, windows set with stout vertical bars under a little hood of their own, and finished at the base with Tateita-bari vertical boarding. The shadows of the barred windows mark the white wall, and the boarding anchors its foot.

The same finish carries on next door. The agency says the barn to the south is also plastered with vertical boarding at the base, and that the rice and tool storehouse beyond it shares the look of the row house and barn. It is tempting to see the oldest building, the Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House, as the model for the outbuildings that followed.

At 16.8 m it is long enough to take up a whole stretch of the east side beside the main house, its gable roof running low and level along the ridge.

Visiting the Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House

The Fujino Family Residence is a private home and the interior is not open. According to Osaka Bunkazai Navi, run by the Osaka Association of Architects and Building Engineers and partner groups, the outbuildings on the east side face a road, so the outer wall of the Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House is probably visible from the road on that side.

Please do not open the east gate or stand in front of it where you would block the way. Directions to the estate are on the Fujino Family Residence (Fujiidera) page.