Kawano Family Residence Main House

What is the Kawano Family Residence Main House?

The Kawano Family Residence Main House (河野家住宅主屋, Kawano-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a farmhouse built in 1851 that stands a little north of the center of the Kawano family's compound in Uchida-cho, Izumi City, Osaka Prefecture, facing south, and it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Registered Tangible Cultural Property) on March 6, 2024. It is a single-story timber building whose roof combines thatch, now temporarily covered with sheet metal, and tile, with a building area of 237 square meters.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Kawano Family Residence Main House was extended in the late Meiji period and renovated in the early Showa period and again around 1980. The agency's note calls it a large, imposing house whose formal entrance and spacious Buddhist altar room show the standing of an old family. It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the country, on the same day as the five gates and storehouses around it.

A thatched peak between tiled wings

The roof of the Kawano Family Residence Main House is of the type called Yamatomune. The core of the house is covered by a steep gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) thatched roof. To the east and west it steps down to lower roofs over side wings (Ochimune), and along the south front runs a pent roof (Geya); these lower roofs are laid with round and flat tiles (Hongawarabuki). The result is a tall thatched peak wrapped on three sides by low tiled roofs.

The thatch is currently sheathed in sheet metal as a temporary cover, but the pitch and bulk of the roof are unchanged, and from the street it rises clearly above the roofs of the gatehouse and storehouses. A local paper reported in 2022 that the roof above the cooking stoves has a smoke vent to let the smoke out.

A formal entrance and eight rooms in two rows

Inside the Kawano Family Residence Main House, the east side is an earth-floored work area (Doma) and the west side is raised and floored, with eight rooms arranged in two rows of four, front and back. Toward the west end of the south front is a Shikidai, a formal entrance with a broad step for receiving important guests, kept separate from the doma entrance the household used every day.

The agency singles out the shikidai and the large Buddhist altar room as signs of the house's status. The family's own account says the Kawano were the village headmen (Shōya) until the end of the Edo period and the Meiji Restoration, and that for generations weddings and funerals were all held at home. For a wedding reception the sliding doors were taken out to join the rooms into one long hall. Eight rooms in two rows give the house room for gatherings on that scale.

A smoke vent over the earthen kitchen under the thatch at one end, a formal tiled front with its guest entrance at the other: the everyday work of cooking and the business of receiving visitors are kept to opposite sides of the one building.

Visiting the Kawano Family Residence Main House

Since May 2022, part of the Kawano Family Residence Main House has been used as an art gallery. The gallery opens only while an exhibition is on, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and is closed on Mondays. Between exhibitions it is shut, so check the schedule on the official website before you go.

Only part of the house serves as the gallery, and it is unconfirmed if visitors can see the whole interior, including the altar room and the doma. The south front with its formal entrance, and the yamatomune roof above it, can be seen straight ahead once you pass through the front gate into the grounds. To read the roof properly, look also at the east and west gable ends, where the tiled wings drop a step below the thatch.