Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture Front Gate

A gate that grows out of a wall

Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture Front Gate is the principal gate of the Nakano family's acupuncture compound in Higashisumiyoshi Ward, Osaka, built in 1902 and entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 5 December 2019.

It opens onto the southern street from a position between the former reception hall and the document storehouse. Timber, tiled roof, 2.2 metres wide, with a kugurido wicket door on the eastern side.

The form is unusual. Rather than standing free, the gate reads as a gabled roof pushed up out of the tall wall that runs along the street. It is a single bay with a single opening, and a side door beside it. Bracket arms are crossed over the head of each main post, purlins are laid across them running front and back, and a beam ties the whole together. At the rear the roof simply continues down, and the ceiling under it is a flat boarded panel.

A signboard set into the upper part carries the characters for needle and for the house name. Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture Front Gate served as one of the entrances patients used.

Why it was registered

Of the seven buildings, only this gate was listed as a model of design. The other six entered under the broader criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The distinction is worth noticing: the gate was judged on its own merits as a piece of design.

Gates integrated into a boundary wall are put together differently from a free-standing munamon or yakuimon. Here the roof is lifted out of the wall line and the structure is carried through it on bracket arms and purlins, a solution with few close parallels.

The gate is attributed to Kongo Gumi, along with the former reception hall and the storehouses. Carpenters whose work lay in temples and shrines brought those methods to a gate on an ordinary city street.

What to look for

Look up at the gable. A gegyo hangs beneath it, the carved pendant used on temple and shrine roofs as a charm against fire. It is rare on a domestic gate, and Osaka City's report singles it out. This is the detail to come for at Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture Front Gate.

Then look at the tops of the posts. Bracket arms cross over each main post and purlins run out from them front and back. The load of the roof is being taken by the posts, not by the wall, and the joint makes that visible.

You cannot pass through, but standing square to the opening gives a glimpse of the flat boarded ceiling at the rear. The doors themselves were rebuilt in cypress during the 2017 financial year under the city's restoration grant; before that they had been patched with plywood.

Seeing it

Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture Front Gate is not open to visitors. The gate is kept shut and the compound cannot be entered.

Viewing is from the southern street. The gate stands directly on the street line, which makes it the one building of the seven whose details can be studied close up. Step back a few paces from the opening to take in the whole gable and the pendant below it. There is no admission charge and no opening hours.

Keep photography to the exterior from the road, and avoid framing patients who are using the gate. Directions from the station and the viewing conditions for the compound as a whole are set out on the Harinakano Nakano Acupuncture page.