Menzan Atsuya House

Mezan Atsushi Residence, Kitchen Wing

The Mezan Atsushi Residence occupies a sloping site in Saho, a hamlet set among the hills north of Ibaraki City in Osaka Prefecture. Eight of the compound's parts were placed on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in December 2000.

Behind the earthen-floored working half of the main house is a small utility building, the kitchen wing. At about 12 square meters it is the smallest of the registered structures, raised in 1912 to handle the water and washing work of the household.

Why It Is Registered

The wing was built for use, and its details follow from that. Inside are a well and a sink, and the floor is laid entirely in stone, a practical surface for a room that stays wet. Log posts stand at intervals of half a ken, roughly ninety centimeters, carrying walls finished in a middle coat of plaster, under a gabled roof of pantiles.

What to Look For

Plain and functional though it is, the kitchen wing completes the service side of the residence, the part of a farmhouse that usually vanishes first as households modernize. Its survival, in the arrangement it was given, is part of why the compound reads as a whole rather than a collection of showpieces.

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.