Yamada Family Residence Kitchen Wing

What the Kitchen Wing Is

The Yamada Family Residence Kitchen Wing (山田家住宅台所棟, Yamada-ke Jūtaku Daidokorotō) is the cooking hall attached to the east side of the main house on the Yamada estate in Shinge, Sennan City, Osaka Prefecture, an Edo-period building remodeled in 1921 and registered in 2002 as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

It is a single-storey timber building with a tiled roof, described by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as hongawarabuki, and a building area of 90 square meters. It joins the main house on the earthen-floored east side, so the two work as one space.

Inside, the floor is packed earth, a Doma, with a well and cooking stoves. A small raised roof on the ridge served as a smoke vent.

A Kitchen on a Headman's Scale

The Yamada Family Residence Kitchen Wing was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The present structure dates from the 1921 remodeling, but the well, stoves and sink survive in good order, and the agency singles out how clearly they show the working kitchen of a prosperous farming household.

A headman's house fed servants and the villagers who gathered on official business as well as the family. According to Osaka Cultural Properties Navi, the stove once had 7 fire mouths. The floor area, about three quarters that of the main house, fits that scale of cooking.

What to Look For

Stand on the earthen floor and look up. Light falls through the smoke vent and picks out the roof framing above. In a kitchen with few windows, the vent was both chimney and skylight.

The well, stove and sink line up in sequence, so the path from drawing water to cooking to washing is still written on the floor. From the forecourt, the lower roof of the Yamada Family Residence Kitchen Wing steps down from the main house on the east, with the little vent roof riding on top: the working side of the estate's silhouette.

Visiting the Kitchen Wing

On public open days you can step onto the earthen floor of the Yamada Family Residence Kitchen Wing. The stoves and well are no longer in use, so look without touching.

The smoke vent is easiest to make out from the east side of the forecourt, near the rice storehouse. Directions and opening days are covered on the Yamada Family Residence page.