Yokoyama Family Residence Main House

What Is the Yokoyama Family Residence Main House?

The Yokoyama Family Residence Main House (横山家住宅主屋, Yokoyama-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey wooden townhouse built in 1835 in the old castle town of Takatsuki, in Johokucho, Takatsuki City, Osaka Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2013.

The Yokoyama Family Residence Main House faces south onto the street. Its roof combines Yosemune-zukuri hipped and Kirizuma-zukuri gabled forms, laid with Sangawara-buki pantiles, and the building covers 171 m². A lean-to Geya roof runs across the front, and a single-storey annex is attached at the northwest. The national database also records alterations made in 1971.

The Last Gōyado of the Castle Town

The Agency for Cultural Affairs regards the Yokoyama Family Residence Main House as the only surviving gōyado (郷宿) building in the former castle town of Takatsuki, and registered it for its contribution to the historic landscape. A gōyado was an inn for village officials and farmers who came into town on business with the domain. Here was a lodging for country people with errands at the castle, set right on a town street.

The sources disagree on the date. The national database gives 1835. Takatsuki City's townscape award page says the house went up about 300 years ago and was heavily rebuilt about a century later, while Osaka Bunkazai Navi gives 1729. It is possible that 1835 marks the rebuilding, but no source says so outright.

What to Look For

The street front is the thing to study. On the ground floor, Degōshi projecting lattices line the facade. The upper floor is finished in Ōkabe style, with the posts buried in a continuous earthen wall plastered white right up to the eaves, and lattice windows are cut into it. The city's award citation picks out exactly this contrast between the dark lattices below and the white upper storey.

Open below and sealed above, the Yokoyama Family Residence Main House shows two quite different faces to the street. Plastering the upper walls all the way to the eaves was probably also meant to slow the spread of fire in a crowded town.

The national description notes the fine joinery of the single-storey annex at the northwest. Photographs published by Osaka Bunkazai Navi show the Doma earthen-floored entry now used as the clinic's waiting room, a Hako-kaidan staircase built into a chest of drawers, an Irori sunken hearth, an inner Zashiki reception room, a tea room and carved transoms, a glimpse of a house that has moved from inn to family home and clinic.

Visiting the Yokoyama Family Residence Main House

The Yokoyama Family Residence Main House is a private home and also houses the Yokoyama Clinic. The interior is normally closed. Osaka Bunkazai Navi says parts of the house are opened from time to time without a fixed schedule, but no official notice of an opening date could be found as of October 2026.

The exterior can be seen from the street to the south; step back to the far side of the road to take in the contrast between the lattices and the white upper floor. Patients use the entrance, so please keep the doorway clear and limit photographs to the exterior as seen from the street. The layout of the whole estate and directions are on the Yokoyama Family Residence page.