Yamada Family Residence Main House

What the Main House Is

The Yamada Family Residence Main House (山田家住宅主屋, Yamada-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is the 1863 dwelling at the center of the Yamada estate in Shinge, Sennan City, Osaka Prefecture, registered in 2002 as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property. The family lived here and ran the village's business from it for as long as they held the post of Shōya, or village headman.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a timber building of one storey with a partial upper floor, a tiled roof, a building area of 119 square meters, and an earth-floored eave and wall along the south side. Its commentary calls the roof hongawarabuki, describes the 1863 work as a rebuilding, and notes that the upper floor keeps timbers that appear to come from an earlier house on the site.

Sennan City reads the building a little differently. It treats the upper floor as the older part, from the middle of the Edo period, and the ground floor as a major remodeling of 1863. Rebuilding or remodeling, both accounts agree that wood older than 1863 survives upstairs, and that later partial alterations produced the house seen today.

Why It Was Registered as a Model of Form

Of the eight registered buildings on the estate, only the Yamada Family Residence Main House was registered as a model of architectural form. The other seven were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The main house, in other words, was valued for its type and not only for its place in the scene.

The key is the plan. The core follows a staggered three-room layout, known locally as kuichigai mimadori, an early version of a plan common in farmhouses of southern Osaka. The rooms facing the earthen hall sit slightly out of line with one another. With the entrance wing and kitchen wing attached on either side, the modern plan looks complicated, but the three-room core is still there.

The entrance is set in the south-facing gable end, a Tsumairi arrangement, so the tall triangle of the roof rises straight toward the forecourt. That orientation gives the headman's house its commanding front.

What to Look For Inside

The earthen hall, the doma, keeps its original packed-earth floor. Tax rice was carried in here first and counted in the raised wooden room beside it. Look up and a ladder climbs to the upper floor, which held farm tools.

Next to the hall is the reception room where the headman received villagers. Its walls carry arresting tools, a jitte truncheon and a barbed sode-garami pole among them, along with spears and lanterns, a reminder that the shōya was also responsible for local order.

The 8-mat formal room keeps sliding-door paintings by the late Edo painter Hine Taizan and a matchlock musket signed by Sato Yoshisada, a gunsmith of Kishiwada. A Japanese clock on the pillar is thought to date from the late 1660s. Farther in, a room of about 20 mats has black plaster walls, and the fine lattice and diamond-pattern latticework of its transoms sharpen an otherwise open, airy space. From the formal rooms the view runs across the front garden to nothing but sky.

Visiting the Main House

The interior of the Yamada Family Residence Main House can be seen on public open days. The earthen hall sometimes doubles as a concert venue. The upper floor is a storage loft reached by ladder, and published guidance does not say whether visitors may climb to it.

For the exterior, stand in the middle of the forecourt just inside the Nagayamon. From there the south gable, the earth-floored eave and the two wings attached to either side come into view together. Directions and opening days are covered on the Yamada Family Residence page.