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 the large farmhouse of a village-headman-class family in Minamishinmachi, Matsubara City, Osaka Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 28, 2009. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to around the Tenpo era (1830 to 1844) and records that it was relocated in 2007.

It faces north at the center of a plot on the west side of the street and covers 247 square metres. The tiled hip-and-gable roof is ringed by lower lean-to eaves, a wing projects to the south, and the house has a low tsushi attic storey.

A 1709 Record and a Tenpo Remodel

The sources disagree on the date. Matsubara City says construction documents show the main house was built in 1709, and that in the Tenpo era its thatched roof was replaced with tile and the attic storey added. The national database's Tenpo date may reflect the house in that remodelled form, but the database gives no reason, so both are given here.

The Tanaka Family Residence Main House was registered as a model of its type. The Agency notes that its frame, locked together with heavy horizontal members, preserves the character of a large early-modern farmhouse.

Big Doors and Heavy Timbers

The main door, a wide ōdo entrance of the kind farmhouses used for harvests and tools, opens toward the east end into an earth-floored work area; the altar room and other raised rooms lie to the west.

The heavy sashimono beams tying post to post are the thing to see. They carry the size of the house and show the scale of a household of this rank, in a house that went from thatch to tile and gained its attic storey along the way.

Access

Matsubara City states that the house is still lived in and that the grounds and buildings cannot be visited. The main house stands in the middle of the plot and cannot be seen whole from the street.