Yamano Family Residence Main House and Wall

About the Yamano Family Residence Main House and Wall

The Yamano Family Residence Main House and Wall (山野家住宅主屋及び塀, Yamano-ke Jūtaku Omoya oyobi Hei) is an ōbei-zukuri Machiya townhouse and its street wall in Nishitenma 3-chome, Kita-ku, Osaka, built around 1918 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2021.

The main house is a 2-storey timber building with a gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) pantile roof and a footprint of 93 square metres. On the street side stand a timber, tile-capped wall and an entrance built as one piece with the house; behind them lies a small front garden, and only then the house itself. The wall runs 14 metres. The Agency for Cultural Affairs also records alterations made in 1933.

Ōbei-zukuri, literally "great-wall construction", is a townhouse type in which a tall wall lines the street and the house is pulled back behind a forecourt. Where an ordinary merchant's machiya presents its shopfront directly to passers-by, here the street sees a wall and a gate. The Agency singles out the Yamano Family Residence Main House and Wall as a rare surviving example of the type in central Osaka.

Rebuilt after the Great Kita Fire

Nishitenma 3-chome lies just west of the old Tenma Horikawa canal and has been built up since the Edo period. After the Great Kita Fire of 1909 swept the district, many new townhouses went up here. According to Osaka City, most of them have since been replaced and the streetscape has changed beyond recognition, but the Yamano house keeps its original exterior and plan.

An article in Ange, the magazine of the Osaka Municipal Housing Information Center, tells the story. The Yamano family, sake brewers at the time, lost both their own house and the rental houses next door in the fire. The head of the family rebuilt the rentals first, for the tenants who had been burned out, and only then, in 1918, rebuilt the family home. The Yamano Family Residence Main House and Wall is that rebuilding.

The owner sees the street as part of the former approach to Osaka Tenmangu Shrine and has expressed the hope that the house helps preserve it. Ange adds that in summer the land procession of the Tenjin Matsuri passes right in front of the gate.

Why It Was Registered

The house was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. What counts is completeness: wall, entrance, forecourt and main house all survive together, in the middle of a busy commercial district. Ange notes that ōbei-zukuri townhouses are seldom seen in a central ward like Kita.

Inside, the ground floor follows the standard machiya pattern of three rooms lined up beside a through passage of beaten earth. Upstairs are a Zashiki reception room and a Western-style study. Ange describes that study as a parlour floored in patterned parquet, and points out that Western parlours in houses of this kind were usually placed beside the entrance; here it went upstairs. It is a telling instance of how a Taisho townhouse absorbed Western elements.

The finishing is meticulous. Different tiles were used on the main roof, the lower pent roof just beneath it and the top of the wall. Doors have woven ajiro panels in their lower halves, and care extends to cupboards, lintels and the tokonoma alcove. From the ground-floor reception room you look out onto a garden at the back, and the fittings, the bathroom ceiling and the upstairs reception rooms keep their original form, according to Ange.

What to Look For

Start with the height of the wall. Stand in the street and compare it with the lattice door of the entrance, and you will see how far it towers over you. Behind the lattice is a folding concertina gate, and a stone-paved path leads from the entrance to the house.

Then look at the upper floor rising above the wall. The narrow wall panels above the openings are finished in jurakuzuri clay plaster, the rest in cedar bark, and brass handrails guard the windows. Compare the three rooflines, main roof, pent roof and wall coping, and you will notice that each wears a different tile.

In 2021 the exterior was restored under Osaka City's programme for townscape improvement of attractive buildings. Air-conditioning pipes that had crept across the facade were rerouted through the interior and the outdoor units moved to the side. The sagging upper-floor eave was straightened, and damaged tiles and copper sheeting were replaced. The walls were repaired with the same cedar bark and clay plaster as before. No photograph survived of the original handrail, so its design and colour were recreated from the owner's memory, and the window glass was replaced with sandblasted panes matching the old pattern. What you see from the street today has been brought back close to its early appearance.

The apartment building next door carries a matching tall wall along its ground floor. It stands on the site of the old rental houses, and its entrance is paved with stones reused from them. Townhouse and newcomer thus face the street behind one continuous wall.

Visiting

The Yamano Family Residence Main House and Wall is a private home and the interior is not open to the public. You can see the wall, the entrance and the upper floor of the house from the street. Ange reports that the owner would like to open the house to the neighbourhood at some point, but no regular public opening has been announced.

Take photographs from the public road only, and do not aim through the lattice door into the forecourt. This is a mixed street of homes and businesses, so keep clear of pedestrians and traffic if you stop.

The nearest stations are Naniwabashi on the Keihan Nakanoshima Line, Minamimorimachi on the Osaka Metro Tanimachi and Sakaisuji lines, and Osaka Tenmangu on the JR Tozai Line; each is within about a 10-minute walk, judging by the map. The house is roughly 500 metres west of the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine precinct.