Sakanoue Family Residence Western-Style Building

What Is the Sakanoue Family Residence Western-Style Building?

The Sakanoue Family Residence Western-Style Building (阪之上家住宅洋館, Sakanoue-ke Jūtaku Yōkan) is a 2-storey brick building of around 1921 in Hamadera Showa-cho, Nishi Ward, Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 18 November 1999. It covers only 37 square meters and stands on its own, detached from the family's main house.

The building sits at the western edge of the lot with its west wall directly on the street. Every other structure of the Sakanoue estate is tucked inside the grounds, so this small brick block is what passers-by see: it is the house's public face.

Where the Design May Have Come From

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes a tradition that the Sakanoue Western-Style Building was put up using part of the drawings for a Hamadera Hotel. The Hamadera Land Company, which had been selling seaside villa plots here since around 1918, planned the hotel but never carried it out. Sakai City tells the same story and places the hotel scheme around 1921.

Both sources present this as something handed down, not as documented fact. No drawings, architect's name or record of which part of the hotel was reused appear in the material consulted. What can be said is that the Sakanoue Family Residence Western-Style Building fits the story: a stern, almost institutional elevation has been given to a building with a footprint of just 37 square meters.

Pilasters Carried Up to the Parapet

The first thing you notice on the Sakanoue Western-Style Building is its pilasters, shallow flat columns projecting from the brick wall. They rise without a break from the ground to the Parapet at the roof line, dividing the 2-storey front into vertical bays. The Agency singles out this facade arrangement as the building's defining feature.

There is no visible pitched roof. The walls end in a level parapet, giving a crisp box silhouette that stands out in a neighbourhood of tiled roofs. From across the street, the grid set up by the upright pilasters and the horizontal parapet is easy to read.

The same motif continues in the outer wall that runs north from the building. Its street-side buttresses were shaped to match the pilasters, which suggests that the brick building and the wall were designed as a single elevation.

The building was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. As one of the structures surviving from the years when the Hamadera villa district was first laid out, it is treated as an essential part of the streetscape.

Seeing the Sakanoue Western-Style Building

The Sakanoue Family Residence Western-Style Building is part of a private home, and the interior is not open to visitors. Sakai City asks that the house be viewed from outside only.

Because its west face is on the road, this is the easiest of the Sakanoue buildings to see. Standing on the opposite side of the street gives the full elevation, pilasters to parapet, in one view. Please do not enter the grounds, and keep any photography brief.