Kimura Family Residence Tea Room

The Kimura Family Residence Tea Room

The Kimura Family Residence Tea Room (木村家住宅茶室, Kimura-ke Jūtaku Chashitsu) is a tea room built in the mid-Meiji era (1883 to 1897) and enlarged in late Meiji on the estate of a Kawachi cotton merchant in Higashihonmachi, Yao City, Osaka Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 24 June 2021. A corridor leads to it from the rear reception room of the main house, and it stands between that room and the main storehouse.

Under one gabled, pantiled roof, 1.5 by 2.5 bays and 19 square meters in area, are two rooms of quite different character: a three-mat room to the north and a four-and-a-half-mat room to the south. A plaque at the corridor entrance names it Gettoan. It was listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs counts it among the small accents of the estate.

Gettoan and the Meiji heads of the house

The registration survey published by Yao City, whose tea room section was written by Professor Yagasaki Zentaro of Osaka Electro-Communication University, explains that Getto comes from the posthumous Buddhist name of the thirteenth Shobei, who died in 1837. Tea utensils he used survive in the family, and the tea room appears to have been built in his memory.

The family's plan of about 1842 shows only a covered passage between the main house and the storehouse. The measured plan of about 1905 shows a three-mat tea room beside that passage. The survey dates the three-mat room to the mid-Meiji era, adding that a date in early Meiji or even the last Edo years would not be surprising. Judging by the weathering of the posts, the four-and-a-half-mat room came later, replacing the passage.

The head of the house in those years, the fifteenth Shobei (1854 to 1905), studied under the Confucian scholar Fujisawa Nangaku, took the art name Tōo, and practiced tea and literati painting. The survey suggests the tea room may date from around 1891, when he succeeded as head. A photograph also survives of the poet Yanagiwara Byakuren in front of the tea room in 1954, when she held a tanka gathering at the house.

Two rooms, two kinds of tea

In the three-mat room, the eastern mat is the host's place and the western two mats are for guests. The host's mat is a full mat, yet the hearth is cut in the mukogiri position where a shortened daime mat would end, so the survey sees the spirit of wabi tea in it. A Shitaji-mado window with exposed lath faces the host, and the ceiling above the host is a lowered panel of woven wood. The host's entrance has a gently curved head, the guest area is open to the roof as a Keshō-yaneura, a crawl-in guest door is set in the northwest corner, and the west wall serves as a simple alcove with just a hook for a hanging scroll.

The four-and-a-half-mat room is separated by sliding paper doors. On the south, translucent screens open onto a veranda that serves as the way in. A half-bay hanging alcove is set in the west wall, a round window sits high in the east wall, and there is no hearth. The Agency describes the hanging alcove, round window and generous opening to the garden as well suited to sencha, steeped leaf tea.

The survey reads the three-mat room as a true rustic room for powdered tea and the larger room as an open space that could also host sencha. The family also kept sencha utensils, and with the doors between them opened the two rooms could seat a large party or a class. The Kimura Family Residence Tea Room shows both tea cultures side by side in a Meiji merchant house in Yao.

Seeing the Kimura Family Residence Tea Room

The Tea Room is not open to the public. It faces the garden behind the main house and cannot be seen from the street to the north.

Yao City is preparing a project to restore and use the Kimura estate; check the city's announcements to learn whether and when the tea room may be shown. Directions to the estate are on the Kimura Family Residence page.