Fujino Family Residence (Fujiidera)

The Fujino Family Residence and its layout

The Fujino Family Residence (藤野家住宅, Fujino-ke Jūtaku) is the estate of a village-headman family in Fujiidera 2-chome, Fujiidera City, Osaka Prefecture, and its 9 structures, built between 1874 and the mid-Meiji period (1883 to 1897), were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2012.

At the center of the plot stands the main house, facing north. The main gate opens in the middle of the north side, and from it a path leads straight to the front of the house. Beside the formal Shikidai entrance step on the north face of the house, a roji gate and a short wall run out to separate the front garden from the main garden beyond. On the west side of the house an earthen wall runs north to south along the edge of the property.

The east side is lined with service buildings. From north to south come the east gate and row house, the barn, and the rice storehouse and tool storehouse, which is joined to the south end of the barn and holds the southeast corner. From there a storage shed and a long, low birdhouse run west along the southern edge. The Fujino Family Residence is, in effect, a main house set in the middle with gates, walls and outbuildings closing it in on every side.

The three eastern buildings were given a matching look. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes Shikkui plaster walls with Tateita-bari vertical boarding at the base on the row house and the barn, and says the rice and tool storehouse shares the same exterior, so that together with the main house they form one consistent estate front.

History of the Fujino Family Residence

During the Edo period the Fujino family served for generations as Shōya daikan, the headmen of Fujiidera Village. Osaka Bunkazai Navi, a heritage guide run by the Osaka Association of Architects and Building Engineers and partner groups, describes the village as a productive place for both rice and cotton.

The buildings that stand today all date from after the Meiji Restoration. In the agency's database the oldest is the east gate and row house, dated 1874. The main house followed in 1893, and the remaining seven are given as mid-Meiji work (1883 to 1897). The estate as it stands was therefore put together over roughly two decades.

Fujiidera City's list of cultural properties sums up the period of all nine as early Meiji. In the national database only the east gate and row house falls in the early Meiji years, and the others are later. This page follows the national database.

Osaka Bunkazai Navi points to the shikidai and entrance room of the main house, and to a garden in front of the formal rooms far larger than the working yard, as signs that the Fujino Family Residence still keeps the look of a headman's estate. A cow stall built into the row house is a reminder that this was also a working farm.

The nine registered structures

All nine structures of the Fujino Family Residence were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 13, 2012, under consecutive numbers 27-0553 to 27-0561. Each was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the country.

• Fujino Family Residence Main House: 1893, 1-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 396 square meters
• Fujino Family Residence East Gate and Row House: 1874, 1-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 83 square meters
• Fujino Family Residence Barn: mid-Meiji period, 1-story Dozo-zukuri building, tiled roof, building area 79 square meters
• Fujino Family Residence Rice Storehouse and Tool Storehouse: mid-Meiji period, 1-story dozo-zukuri building, tiled roof, building area 51 square meters
• Fujino Family Residence Storage Shed: mid-Meiji period, 1-story dozo-zukuri building, tiled roof, building area 14 square meters
• Fujino Family Residence Birdhouse: mid-Meiji period, 1-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 21 square meters
• Fujino Family Residence Main Gate: mid-Meiji period, wooden, tiled roof, 2.2 m wide, with an attendants' room and wing walls
• Fujino Family Residence Roji Gate and Wall: mid-Meiji period, the gate 1.6 m wide and the wall 8.0 m long in total, both wooden with tiled tops
• Fujino Family Residence Wall: mid-Meiji period, earthen wall with a tiled top, 19 m long

The building area of the main house is given as 396 square meters in the data field of the agency's database but as 350 square meters in the description on the same page. The list above uses the data field.

Visiting the Fujino Family Residence

The Fujino Family Residence is a private home, and Osaka Bunkazai Navi lists it as not open to visitors. You cannot go through the gate, and neither the main house nor the gardens can be seen. What you can look at from the street is mainly the main gate and its wing walls on the north road. The same guide notes that the row house and storehouses on the east side also face a road.

Please do not linger in front of the gate or block the way, and keep photographs to the exterior from the street. People live here.

The main gate of the Fujino Family Residence faces the east-west road that passes in front of the Nandaimon, the south gate of Fujiidera Temple (葛井寺). The nearest station is Fujiidera on the Kintetsu Minami-Osaka Line, about 400 m from the gate in a straight line by map coordinates. Walk from the station to the temple's south gate and head a short way east along the road in front of it to find the residence's roofed gate on the street.