Iwane Family Residence

About the Iwane Family Residence

The Iwane Family Residence (岩根家住宅, Iwane-ke Jūtaku) is an old family estate in Gokenya 2-chome, Tondabayashi City, Osaka Prefecture, where a main house of the late Edo period (1830 to 1867) stands among buildings of the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras; eight of its structures were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in two rounds, in 2008 and 2015. The estate is privately owned and still lived in.

According to Tondabayashi City, the Iwane were the leading old family of Gokenya and brewed sake here from the early Meiji period into the early Showa years. Iwane Igoro, the fifteenth head of the house, served as village mayor. The compound covers roughly 1,000 tsubo, about 3,300 square meters, and its south side runs along an old road.

A farmhouse, a brewery, a suite of guest rooms, and a tiny tea room built inside a sake barrel: at the Iwane Family Residence you can follow, building by building, how one rural household moved from farming into brewing and then made room for leisure.

Registered in Two Rounds

The first three structures of the Iwane Family Residence, the main house, the inner drawing room and the sake brewery, were registered on April 18, 2008. The survey behind that registration was carried out by Yamagata Masaaki, then a professor of architecture at Osaka University of Arts.

On November 17, 2015, five more were added: the tea room, the gatehouse, the south storehouse, the west storehouse and the kangobei fence. All eight were registered under the same criterion, their contribution to the historic landscape of the country.

Tondabayashi City singles out one quality in particular. Late Edo, Meiji and Taisho buildings stand together on the same property, so the estate records how a Japanese farmhouse changed as the country moved from the early modern into the modern age.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions allow the plan of the Iwane Family Residence to be pieced together. The main house stands at the center of the plot facing south, with the inner drawing room attached to its west side. North of that, toward the northwest corner, rises the large sake brewery, and the west storehouse, set in the middle of the west edge, joins onto it. South of the brewery lies an inner courtyard, where the tea room sits.

Three structures form the outer face of the estate. The long south storehouse runs beside the road on the south side, the gatehouse, a nagayamon-type gate building, stands at the southern end of the east side with its entrance facing east, and the kangobei fence bends along a stone wall from the south storehouse to the corner of the west storehouse.

The dates given in the Agency's database run roughly as follows.

• Main house: late Edo period (1830 to 1867), enlarged and altered in the early Taisho period
• Sake brewery: mid-Meiji period, repaired in 1997; Tondabayashi City dates it to the Meiji 20s (1887 to 1896)
• Inner drawing room: early Taisho period (1912 to 1925)
• Gatehouse, south storehouse and kangobei fence: early Taisho period (1912 to 1918); the south storehouse was altered around 1975
• West storehouse: early Showa period (1926 to 1945)
• Tea room: around 1957

For the main house, Tondabayashi City says only that it is believed to date from the late Edo period, while the Agency's database narrows it to the years 1830 to 1867.

Visiting

The Iwane Family Residence is not open to the public, as Tondabayashi City notes on its cultural properties pages. There are no opening hours and no admission, and visitors cannot enter the grounds or see inside any of the buildings.

The street front can still be seen from public roads. From the south you look along the south storehouse and the kangobei fence; from the east, the gatehouse. The city also notes that the tall gable wall of the sake brewery, with its small attached eave, can be seen from the old road. This is a family home, so keep to the public road when looking or taking photographs.

The nearest railway station is Osakasayamashi on the Nankai Koya Line, about 1.1 kilometers from the Iwane Family Residence on foot, or roughly a 15-minute walk. There is no visitor parking.