Main Building of Menzan Atsuya Residence

Mezan Atsushi Residence, Main House

Saho is a small hamlet in the wooded hills north of central Ibaraki City, in Osaka Prefecture, and the Mezan Atsushi Residence sits at its center. Eight of the compound's structures were entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties in December 2000.

The thatched roof of the main house lifts above the other rooftops of the hamlet. This single-story timber building of about 154 square meters was raised in 1912, the first year of the Taishō era, and it is the largest of the eight registered structures on the site.

Why It Is Registered

In its layout the house follows the farmhouse type long built in this part of Osaka, with a broad earthen-floored doma running through the working half of the plan. The formal rooms are another matter. There the carpenters installed a complete set of reception features, a display alcove, staggered shelving and a built-in writing bay, finished to a standard closer to a well-made townhouse than to an ordinary farm dwelling. The register lists the house under the criterion for buildings that would be hard to reproduce, a category kept for work of unusual quality.

What to Look For

What sets the main house apart is its completeness rather than any one room. The doma, the hearth area and the kitchen passage survive in the arrangement they were given when the house went up, an inheritance most farmhouses of this age lost long ago. From the lane the deep thatch reads as the visual center of Saho, the point around which the rest of the compound is organized.

The Mezan Atsushi Residence is a private home, and its interior is not open to visitors. The village lanes, however, pass close by the walls, storehouses and stone base that face the public road, so the streetscape can be taken in from outside without entering the grounds. For displays on the wider history of the area, the Ibaraki City Cultural Property Museum in the city center is open to the public.