Yamamoto Family Residence (Taishi)

About the Yamamoto Family Residence in Taishi

The Yamamoto Family Residence (山本家住宅, Yamamoto-ke Jūtaku) is a homestead built in 1914 in the Taishi district of Taishi Town, Minamikawachi District, Osaka Prefecture, and its main house, east storehouse, west storehouse and high wall became Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 12, 2001. All four share the address 1773 Taishi, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs dates every one of them to 1914, the third year of the Taisho era.

The house stands at the gates of Eifukuji, the temple that guards the tomb of Prince Shōtoku. The Takenouchi Kaidō, an old highway between the Osaka plain and Nara, runs along the north side of the plot, and the family built a long frontage onto it. According to the Agency, the broad, gently swelling roof of the main house catches the eye from the temple grounds as well as from the road.

Taishi has a second registered "Yamamoto house": the Daidō Former Yamamoto Family Residence in the Yamada district, a late Edo farmhouse with a thatched yamato-mune roof that the town opens to visitors. That is a separate property. This page covers the Yamamoto Family Residence in front of Eifukuji.

How the Buildings Sit on the Plot

Putting the Agency's descriptions together gives roughly this layout:

• The main house faces the highway. It is a two-storey timber building about 19 meters wide and 8 meters deep (10.5 by 4.5 ken), with a footprint of 244 square meters.
• The east storehouse stands east of the main house and also fronts the road. A wooden side gate links the two.
• The west storehouse sits in the southwest corner of the plot. It is the only building here roofed with full Hongawarabuki tiling; the rest use lighter Sangawara-buki pantiles.
• The high wall runs 34 meters, starting at the western part of the street side and turning the corner to follow the west side as far as the northwest corner of the storehouse there. At its east end on the street side a roofed Udekimon gate opens south toward the formal end of the main house.

Three of the four, the main house, the east storehouse and the wall, make up the street front, and the Agency credits them together with giving this stretch of the highway its traditional face. The west storehouse is tucked away at the back but was registered as an essential part of the homestead.

The 2001 Registration

The four structures of the Yamamoto Family Residence were entered on the register in its 30th round, on October 12, 2001, with official notice on October 29. Their registration numbers run consecutively, 27-0154 for the main house, 27-0155 for the west storehouse, 27-0156 for the east storehouse and 27-0157 for the wall, and all four qualify as contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

Since every building carries the same date, the house, both storehouses and the wall seem to have been put up as a single campaign. The result is a Kawachi roadside homestead of the early Taisho years preserved at one moment in time.

The Agency picks out a few details: carved bracing struts on the main house, a tatami room inside the east storehouse with a narrow veranda on its south side, and plaster carried all the way up into the roof framing of the west storehouse. Each building has its own page with more on these points.

Visiting the Yamamoto Family Residence in Taishi

No public or special openings of the Yamamoto Family Residence could be found, and the Agency's database gives no owner. Treat it as a private home: view it from the Takenouchi Kaidō, take photographs only from the public road, and keep clear of the gates.

The nearest station is Kaminotaishi on the Kintetsu Minami-Osaka Line. The Osaka Convention and Tourism Bureau puts the walk to Eifukuji at about 30 minutes, and Osaka Prefecture gives 23 minutes (1.7 kilometers) to the Taishi Nagomi Plaza next to the temple. The house is right at the temple gates, so allow about the same.

By bus, Taishi Town's community buses, including the Taishi Chuo loop, run from Kaminotaishi Station to the Shotoku Taishi Gobyo-mae stop. From Kishi Station on the Kintetsu Nagano Line, Kintetsu Bus's Kishi loop serves the same stop. Routes changed on December 21, 2023 when Kongo Bus ceased operating; buses now run roughly once an hour and the stop has moved.