Former Joki Clinic

A Country Doctor's Household, Kept Whole

The Former Joki Clinic (旧常喜医院, Kyū Jōki Iin) is the former home and medical practice of the Joki family of physicians in Dotani, Maibara City, Shiga Prefecture, where five buildings centred on a main house built in 1904 were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on December 5, 2019. The family name 常喜 is read Jōki; older English listings that give it as "Tsuneki" are a misreading.

Dotani is a farming hamlet in the southern part of Maibara. The Joki family practised medicine here for generation after generation. A 2019 report by the Shiga Prefectural Board of Education, written when the buildings were recommended for registration, notes that the head of the family at that time was the 14th in the line, and local press coverage describes the household as having looked after the area's health since the Edo period.

A village doctor's house was two things at once: a place where patients came to be seen, and the residence of one of the district's leading families. That double role is why the site matters. The entrance where patients were received, a formal reception room for guests, a storehouse for medical books, another for rice and grain, and a small stable for the horse that carried the doctor on house calls all survive together on a single plot. The property now belongs to Maibara City.

Why Five Buildings Were Registered Together

Following a recommendation from Japan's Council for Cultural Affairs in July 2019, the main house, the shoin reception wing, the east storehouse, the west storehouse and the stable were all registered on December 5 of that year, under consecutive registration numbers 25-0442 through 25-0446.

They were registered on two different grounds. The main house qualified as a building that "serves as a model of form," the criterion for architecture that shows a type clearly; the other four qualified as buildings that "contribute to the historic landscape." In other words, the main house was valued for the way it folds a working clinic and a family home into one structure, and the rest for the part they play in the layout of the estate.

The prefectural report makes the same point in plainer terms: the principal buildings of a long line of doctors survive in good condition, each is well built, and together they preserve the arrangement of a rural medical household that served the surrounding area for a very long time. No single building here is extraordinary on its own. What is unusual is that nothing is missing.

The buildings also span several decades. The west storehouse dates from the late Meiji period, the main house from 1904, the east storehouse from 1915, the stable from the late Taisho period and the shoin from around 1930, while the main house itself was altered around 1925 and again around 1930. Walking the site, you can follow a practice adding rooms and outbuildings as its needs changed, from the late nineteenth century into the early Showa years.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The gate opens on the south side of the plot. Close to it, in the southeast corner, stands the stable, with its doorway facing west. Keeping the horse by the gate makes obvious sense for a doctor who might be called out at any hour.

The main house occupies the centre of the site and faces south. The front of the ground floor, where an entrance block projects toward the garden side, held the clinic; the rooms behind it and the whole upper floor were the family's living quarters. The shoin stands to the west, joined to the main house by a corridor along its north side, and wraps around a garden.

The two storehouses close off the back of the estate. The west storehouse sits north of the main house with its door facing east; the east storehouse stands to the northeast, facing south. Both share the same finish, white plaster above and vertical boarding below, and together they give the rear of the property a single, consistent face.

Visiting and Getting There

As of September 2026, Maibara City's official website does not list the Former Joki Clinic among its museums or other regularly open facilities, and no scheduled opening days are published. Anyone hoping to visit should contact the owner in advance through the Maibara City Board of Education, Lifelong Learning Division (cultural property conservation section), telephone 0749-53-5154. It is worth asking at the same time whether photography is allowed on the grounds and where to park if you are driving.

The address is 212 Kitakoji, Dotani, Maibara. The nearest railway stations are Samegai and Omi-Nagaoka on the JR Tokaido Line, each about 2 kilometres away as the crow flies. On foot that means more than 30 minutes, so a taxi from the station is a sensible option.

The family's collection of ceramics, lacquerware and metalwork has been shown separately at the Omi Haniwa Museum in Maibara; the 2022 exhibition in that series displayed 48 pieces. It is not part of the registered buildings, but it helps fill in the picture of how this household lived.