Tanaka Family Residence Front Gate

The Tanaka Family Residence Front Gate on the Kishu Kaido

The Tanaka Family Residence Front Gate (田中家住宅表門, Tanaka-ke Jūtaku Omotemon) is a long gatehouse rebuilt in 1877 on the old Kishu Kaido highway in Sukematsucho, Izumiotsu City, Osaka Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 5, 2007. It fronts the estate of the Tanaka family, who hosted the lords of Kii on their journeys along this road.

The gate stands east of the main house, right at the edge of the highway. It is a single-storey timber building 10 by 2 and a half bays, with a building area of 115 square metres, under a gabled roof of interlocking hongawara tiles. A passage 3 bays wide opens in the middle; north of it is a bedding store, south of it a room for attendants.

A Rebuilt Gate That Keeps the Old Pattern

The Tanaka Family Residence Front Gate is a Meiji-era rebuilding, not an Edo original. The Agency for Cultural Affairs nonetheless notes that it follows the earlier layout and gives the estate a front worthy of a honjin, an official rest house for travelling lords. It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, which is to say for the way it shapes the streetscape of the old highway.

The rooms on either side of the three-bay passage are named in the record as a bedding store and an attendants' room. Placing them inside the gate, rather than deep in the house, made the gate a building in its own right, where visitors and their retinue were met before they went further.

What to Look For

Walk up from the south and watch the far end. The attendants' room is roofed separately, with a hip-and-gable end turned at right angles to the main ridge, and it projects one bay toward the road. That step in the outline is the most distinctive thing about the Tanaka gate.

From the gate's northeast corner the roofed earthen wall carries on north along the road, so from the right spot the gate and wall read as one long frontage, a good measure of how large the estate is.

Seeing the Front Gate

The Tanaka Family Residence Front Gate belongs to a private home, and the grounds are closed to visitors. Because the gate faces the old Kishu Kaido, you can see and photograph its exterior from the public road; please do not linger in the gateway or block the street.