Tanaka Family Residence Main House

The Tanaka Family Residence Main House

The Tanaka Family Residence Main House (田中家住宅主屋, Tanaka-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a landowner's house built in 1887 on the hills west of the Amano River in Yamanoue, Hirakata City, Osaka Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 2, 2018. It faces south at the center of the compound and covers 260 square metres.

The single-storey house has a hip-and-gable roof of hongawara tiles. Its front is plastered solid up to the eaves, pierced with slatted mushiko windows and closed at each end by a short projecting wing wall.

A Traditional Plan With a Sense of Rank

The Tanaka Family Residence Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as keeping the traditional farmhouse form while signalling status through features such as its formal shikidai entrance. Though built in mid Meiji, it follows a farmhouse pattern inherited from the Edo period.

The western half is an earth-floored doma; the eastern half holds the raised rooms, laid out in three rows, with the two rooms of the eastern row under a lower, stepped-down roof. An accounting room projects from the south front, presumably where the household's books were kept, which puts a landlord's business right at the face of the house.

Beams and a Plastered Front

Inside, the doma is the place to look up: the Agency notes its heavy exposed framing, with thick timbers crossing overhead.

Outside, compare the plastered front and its mushiko windows with the nagaya gate on the south edge of the grounds. The gate is finished the same way, so the house and its gate read as a matched pair.

Access

The Tanaka Family Residence Main House stands in the middle of the grounds and cannot be seen whole from outside. No official information on public opening could be found; the compound appears to be a private home, and the grounds cannot be entered.