Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture

A clinic that gave its name to the neighbourhood

Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture (針中野中野鍼) is the walled compound of the Nakano family's acupuncture practice in Higashisumiyoshi Ward, Osaka, where seven buildings raised between the late Edo period and 1938 were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 5 December 2019.

Most Japanese place names come from geography, a river bend or a hill. This one came from a business. The Kintetsu station a few minutes away is called Harinakano, and the surrounding district takes its name from the station, which in turn was named after the Nakano acupuncture house that stood here long before the tracks arrived.

The compound is compact. Two streets border it, north and south, and the whole plot measures roughly 40 metres across. Along the northern edge stand the treatment hall and the main house, both facing the street. The southern edge presents a different face: a roofed gate set into a tall wall, flanked by a former reception building and two storehouses, their plastered walls running in a continuous white line. A second gate opens at the north-east corner.

Each of the seven buildings carries its own registration number, running in sequence from 27-0779 to 27-0785. Six were listed under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country; only the front gate qualified on the stricter ground of being a model of design. Read together, the listing rewards the ensemble rather than any single structure.

Forty-odd generations

According to material published by Higashisumiyoshi Ward, the family trades under the house name Nakano Amakudaru Hariya. The ward records a founding in the Enryaku era, between 782 and 805, and a line of succession passed to a single heir in each generation, with daughters trained as head of the house when no son was born. A further story holds that the priest Kukai, travelling to preach, lodged here and left two wooden figures marking acupuncture points along with a gold needle. The ward attributes all of this to the testimony of the 43rd head of the family and frames it as what the house relates, not as documented fact.

The documentary trail begins later. A large illustrated map of the Hirano district, published in 1763, marks the spot as the home of a children's acupuncturist of Nakano village.

In the Meiji period the 41st head, Nakano Shinkichi, qualified as a physician and built Western medicine into the family practice. Patients came from across the Kinki region, and the household put up lodgings inside the compound for those who had travelled too far to return the same day. When the Nankai Hirano Line opened in 1914, stone waymarkers were set at seven junctions along the route from the station to the clinic. Two of them survive nearby, carved with directions to the needle road and the tram road.

The railway repaid a favour. The 41st head had helped the Osaka Railway, today the Kintetsu Minami-Osaka Line, secure its right of way, and when the line opened in 1923 the nearest station was named Harinakano. The station name became the district name, which is why an address in Osaka now carries the word for needle.

One loss is worth noting. A three-storey tower house, visible from a distance and unusual for its time, was pulled down in 1975 when it became unsafe.

The seven registered buildings

All seven entered the register together, in the 94th round of listings on 5 December 2019.

• Treatment hall (27-0779), late Edo period, single-storey timber frame with a sheet-metal roof, 102 square metres. Treatment still takes place here, and it is the oldest of the seven
• Main house (27-0781), 1910, single-storey timber frame with a tiled roof, 159 square metres. A wing for patient rooms was added around 1938
• Former reception hall (27-0780), 1902, two storeys in timber with sections in dozo-zukuri construction, tiled roof, 51 square metres. Built to receive guests
• Front gate (27-0784), 1902, timber with a tiled roof, 2.2 metres wide
• Document storehouse (27-0782), 1902, two-storey dozo-zukuri with a tiled roof, 27 square metres
• General storehouse (27-0783), 1910, two-storey dozo-zukuri with a sheet-metal roof, 21 square metres
• Rear gate (27-0785), around 1938, timber with a copper-tile roof, 2.3 metres wide

The front gate, the former reception hall and the storehouses are attributed to Kongo Gumi, the Osaka firm long associated with temple and shrine carpentry. Three of them went up in the same year, 1902, which suggests the southern frontage was conceived and built as one project rather than accumulated piece by piece.

What the 2017 work changed

Osaka City selected the compound as a model case for its programme of grants for townscape-enhancing buildings, and work on the southern frontage was carried out in the 2017 financial year.

Corrugated iron that had been nailed over the storehouse walls came off and was replaced with charred cedar boarding; damaged boards elsewhere were renewed. The shikkui plaster was re-coated. Gate doors that had been patched with plywood were rebuilt in cypress. Vinyl rainwater pipes gave way to copper, and light fittings and extraction hoods that spoiled the elevation were screened from view.

The city's assessor described the result as the southern elevation recovering, as a continuous line, the appearance it had held since the end of the Meiji period. The same report lists what still waits: the outer walls of the main house on the north side, a Western-style annexe, the rear gate and the eastern boundary wall. The compound is a restoration in progress.

Seeing it

None of the seven buildings at Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture is open to visitors. The gates stay shut, the interiors are closed, and the compound is both a private home and a working clinic. Viewing means the exterior, from the public street.

The southern street is the one to walk. Moving from west to east you pass the former reception hall, the front gate, the document storehouse and the general storehouse in turn. The storehouses alternate gable end and long side, so the wall surface changes character every few paces, white plaster above and black charred boarding below. Look up at the gable of the front gate for the gegyo, the carved pendant hung below the ridge as a charm against fire. It is the finest detail on the street. Walk round to the northern street and the treatment hall and main house face you head on.

Harinakano Station on the Kintetsu Minami-Osaka Line is the nearest stop, about 3 minutes on foot from the western exit. From Komagawanaka Station on the Osaka Metro Tanimachi Line the walk takes about 8 minutes and follows the old Koshin highway, passing one of the surviving waymarkers on the way. There is no visitor parking.

No notice restricts photography, but keep the camera on the exteriors as seen from the road. Patients use these gates, and framing people or the courtyard beyond the threshold would be an intrusion. Enquiries about treatment go to the clinic directly.