Menzan Atsuya Residence Barn

Mezan Atsushi Residence, Barn

North of central Ibaraki City, in the Osaka hills, the hamlet of Saho grew up around the Mezan Atsushi Residence. Eight structures within the family's walled grounds were registered as Tangible Cultural Properties in 2000.

The barn at the southeast corner of the grounds is the oldest of the eight registered structures. It was built in 1905, in the thirty-eighth year of the Meiji era, some seven years before the main house, and covers about 41 square meters.

Why It Is Registered

A pent roof, or shita-ya, runs along the southern half of the front, and a matching eave extends north from it, carried on shaped wooden brackets. The gabled roof is tiled, and the outer walls are of the ōkabe type, plastered so as to conceal the frame, with the rafters and purlin ends themselves worked over in plaster at the eaves.

What to Look For

A barn is a working building, but this one was given a considered face because it stands at the head of the approach path into the compound. That attention to appearance, on a structure meant for storage and labor, is characteristic of the whole estate, and the barn is registered for the part it plays in the historic landscape.

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.