Fujino Family Residence Barn

About the Fujino Family Residence Barn

The Fujino Family Residence Barn (藤野家住宅納屋, Fujino-ke Jūtaku Naya) is a 1-story Dozo-zukuri barn with thick clay walls, built in the mid-Meiji period (1883 to 1897) in Fujiidera 2-chome, Fujiidera City, Osaka Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2012.

The Fujino Family Residence Barn stands southeast of the main house with its ridge running north to south. It measures 11.7 m by 4.9 m, with a building area of 79 square meters, under a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles. A Tsuchibisashi canopy shelters its west face. One bay at the north end is a passageway, and the rest is barn.

The east gate and row house lies to the north and the rice and tool storehouse to the south, so the barn sits in the middle of the line of outbuildings along the east side of the estate. Its south end touches the storehouse.

Why the Fujino Family Residence Barn was registered

The Fujino Family Residence Barn was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to its Shikkui plastered walls with Tateita-bari vertical boarding at the base, and says that together with the east gate and row house, the main house and the rice storehouse it creates a unified streetscape.

The unity goes beyond surface finish. Put the agency's figures side by side and the east gate and row house, the barn and the rice and tool storehouse all share the same depth of 4.9 m. Long buildings of equal depth set end to end make it easy to keep eaves heights and roof pitches in line. The barn seems to have been sized so that the east side of the estate would read as one continuous band.

A barn usually holds farm tools and harvested crops, and is often a plain wooden building. Building this one in dozo-zukuri, with walls of thickly applied earth, shows how much care the household spent even on its service buildings.

What to look for at the Fujino Barn

The canopy is on the west face of the Fujino Family Residence Barn, the side that faces into the estate. A tsuchibisashi is the sort of deep eave set in front of a storehouse or workplace so that loading and handwork can carry on under cover in the rain. Osaka Bunkazai Navi, run by the Osaka Association of Architects and Building Engineers and partner groups, mentions a working yard south of the main house, and the barn's canopy appears to open toward that working space.

Do not overlook the passage at the north end, a way straight through the building. The agency does not say what it connected, but it may have been a shortcut between the inside of the estate and the outside, across the line of outbuildings.

To the street the barn shows white plaster and a boarded base; to the yard inside it opens a sheltered work area under its canopy. It is a building with two different faces.

Visiting the Fujino Family Residence Barn

The Fujino Family Residence is a private home and the interior is not open. Osaka Bunkazai Navi says the east-side outbuildings face a road, so the east wall of the Fujino Family Residence Barn is probably visible from outside. The west face with its canopy is inside the estate and cannot be seen.

Please keep photographs to the exterior from the road. Directions to the estate are on the Fujino Family Residence (Fujiidera) page.