Wada Family Residence Main House

The Main House at the Centre of the Estate

The Wada Family Residence Main House (和田家住宅主屋, Wada-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey timber residence built in 1930 on the Wada family estate in Miyamotocho, Kishiwada City, Osaka Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 21 August 2002. It is the principal building among the ten registered structures on the property.

The house faces southwest and rises to a full second storey across its whole footprint, under an Irimoya-zukuri roof of heavy Hongawarabuki tiles with some copper sheeting. Its building area is 390 square metres. The plan bends into an L, and the projecting arm, finished in thick Shikkui lime plaster, carries the formal entrance beneath a hip-and-gable roof of its own.

Why It Was Registered

The Wada Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion reserved for buildings that would be hard to reproduce. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out the quality of the timber, a carefully designed Western-style room, a guest room with refined alcove fittings, and a service entrance hall open to the full height of the house, and calls the whole a fine example of an early Showa Japanese-style residence.

Pairing a Western-style reception room with traditional tatami rooms was common in large Japanese houses of the period. What stands out here is the setting: that mix sits under a full tiled hip-and-gable roof on a house two storeys high throughout.

The main house is also the reference point for the whole compound. The agency's descriptions place every other building by its relation to it: the gate directly in front of the entrance, the inner storehouse behind, the waiting arbor to the east, the detached wing to the west.

What to Look For

Look first at the roof. Putting a tiled hip-and-gable roof over a full second storey gives the house a bulk that a typical townhouse, with its low upper floor, never has.

The projecting wing is the most solid part of the building, its thick plastered walls framing the entrance porch. The porch lines up with the nagayamon gate, so a visitor passing through the gate would have faced the front door head-on.

Inside, the agency lists three highlights: the Western room, the guest room and the double-height service entrance. That everyday entrance, used by family and tradespeople, was given generous space too, a sign of how freely the household built.

Visiting the Main House

The Wada Family Residence Main House is still a home and its interior is not open to the public; no opportunity to see the Western room or the guest room has been announced.

Because it stands behind the gate and the outer wall, the house cannot be seen whole from the street. Its height means the tiled roof shows above the wall. Directions and visiting etiquette for the estate are on the Wada Family Residence page.